


Nuka Girl

by elo_elo



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Building a Healthy Relationship, Dom/sub Undertones, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Hancock's a secret softie, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mutual Pining, Non Canon Compliant Sole Survivor, Rough Sex, Slow Burn, Smut, Violence, and is also a drug kingpin, but in like an extremely casual way, from the ruins of a kinda fucked one, who likes rough sex, you know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:35:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 50,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22997797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elo_elo/pseuds/elo_elo
Summary: John Hancock has never been what you would call a good man. But when a pretty young thing with a dark past falls into his orbit, he discovers he might like to try and become one.Or Hancock does some soul searching, some saving the Commonwealth, and some falling in love.-Reuploaded-
Relationships: John Hancock/Female Sole Survivor
Comments: 181
Kudos: 236





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a reupload of a story that I posted on here about a year ago and never finished. I’ve made some major changes to the plot (surprise! It has one now!) and cleaned up a lot of the writing. I decided to reupload instead of just edit because honest to god my brain just cannot function if I try to edit it just piecemeal. I really want to do the story I have in mind justice and I hope you like my changes and everything I have planned going forward <3  
> I know this isn’t every reader’s ideal but I hope you’ll bear with me about it :)

Just when he thinks he’s seen everything, John Hancock sees her. Sweet little thing. Mouthing off at Finn a little too loud and a little too boisterous for a girl her size. A real doll, looking like she’d hopped right out of a Nuka Cola ad. All leg; soft blonde waves framing a pretty little face. Freckles too. _Shit,_ Hancock is a sucker for freckles. And she’s got ‘em sprinkled across her nose, her high pretty cheekbones. Cute. _Real_ cute. Face like a goddamn angel, but a chip on her shoulder big enough to break her back. He can see _that_ from a mile away. Cussing Finn out like a goddamn raider. It’s all interesting enough to pull him away from his, uh, mayoral duties and head out toward the courtyard.

He leans against the side of State House and lights a cigarette, settling in to watch Finn try and shake her down. The smoke billows out the holes where his nose should be. Finn reaches back for the hunting knife tucked in the hem of his pants and Hancock frowns. If Finn is thinking about snuffing out a broad this goddamn pretty, then he’s a bigger idiot than Hancock thought. Besides, Hancock thinks as he pushes off the brick wall, this is Goodneighbor business. He’s been meaning to nip this extortion shit in the bud for a while now. Been tolerating Finn’s _indiscretions_ because the son of a bitch can take down a super mutant better than any of the other guys Hancock’s got right now. But this shit is making him mad today, really pissed the fuck off. Finn’s drawn his blade now, brandishing it like a real fool, no finesse. But to Hancock’s surprise, this pretty broad just spits like an angry cat at his feet. Maybe she’s a fool too. Or maybe she’s got a little lust for death. Both types are no stranger to Goodneighbor. Hancock chuckles, taking a long drag from his cigarette. Ferocious little thing either way.

He shifts to try and get a better look at her, to try and see if her ass is as sweet and perky as her tits, when he notices a blood-soaked bandage wrapped too tight around her left thing. Hancock frowns, tosses his still lit cigarette onto the shattered cobblestone beneath his feet. He’s got a sick feeling in his gut. That kind of tender bullshit he gets every now and again. She’s bringing it out in him. It looks like this girl’s been taking more than a few hits out in the wastes. And Hancock’s having a buzzy high this morning. Makes his fingers itchy. Makes him feel _real_ generous. Maybe just a tinge homicidal. He runs his knife along the grooves in his palm and steps out from the shadows. The decision is easy, one he doesn’t even really have to make.

Her reaction tells Hancock pretty much everything he needs to know. She’s surprised, yeah, but sort of giddy too. In a hysterical little way. Maybe just a touch hot about it? Nah, that one might be wishful thinking. She’s watching him twirl his knife between his fingers, wets those big, pretty lips of hers with his tongue. Maybe not. He can’t help a grin at that. Hell, Hancock’s having more fun right here and now than he’s had in months. And now that he’s close up, he can see she’s got a little pet. Probably should have noticed _that_ earlier, but the mentats are blurring a little with the jet he hit and, if he’s honest, he wasn’t really looking anywhere but her. Bit of a mangy animal she’s got stuck to her side. Cute though. Until it bears its big, bloody teeth at him. She runs her long fingers over the pooch’s ear and the thing settles down with a single, final warning growl in his direction. “Your pooch don’t like me much.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Should he?” He doesn’t recognize her accent, but he sure does like the way it sounds.

Hancock chuckles, noticing, as he ducks his head to light another cigarette, that she’s trembling, just a little. He pauses, match burning out between his fingers, then straightens up, giving her another once over. She doesn’t look scared, not really. Looks suspiciously casual, actually. A little too nonchalant for a girl with a wound like that, with another man’s blood spattered across her tits. So maybe it’s an act, betrayed by those shaking fingers. Or maybe she’s just cold. Hancock tells himself he doesn’t give a shit, takes another hard look at her. She can’t seem to take her eyes off him. Her pupils are blown wide, jaw a little slack. He recognizes that look, like she’s trying to piece him together. “I’m a ghoul sweetheart, you can stop staring.”

She scrunches her nose. It makes her look real young. “What’s a ghoul?”

That surprises him, starts his thoughts down a path he’s too fucked up to continue. He takes a long drag of his cigarette. “Whoa-ho-ho-ho, sweetheart, you really are new in town.”

She looks almost offended and that pretty face of hers ain’t so pretty when she starts to scowl. “You know what? I know what you look like.” Little bit of a brat. That’s cute too. 

He grins, enjoying this probably more than he should. “And what do I look like, sister?”

“An asshole.” She nearly spits it at him.

Hancock cracks an honest to god beaming smile. “Oh, I can tell I’m gonna like you already.”

She heads off, surprisingly, to the Memory Den. He’d watched her go from the State House’s balcony, letting a mentat roll around in his mouth, cigarette burning down between his fingers. He figured her more for a Third Rail type and, as he sits in his darkening Stateroom, he sure as hell can’t imagine what she’d want to be reliving. Not born and bred in one of those shithole vaults like he figures she was. That suit looks mighty nice clinging to her body like that, but it’s a red flag. Unless she pulled that suit off some poor dead fucker. The thought delights him a little. He takes a long hit of jet and lets himself try to imagine it. Easier said than done. She barely looks big enough to give a proper shakedown to a corpse much less undress it, so the fantasy loses steam quick. He’s flipping through other fantasies he can try and have her star in when it dawns on him. He peels himself up from his spot on the couch and yells for Fahrenheit.

She slinks into the room, scowling. He knows there are about a million other things she probably needs to be doing, but the mentats he took are fucking roaring through his system and he can’t let this train of thought go. “You see that girl that came into town this afternoon?”

“Oh yeah.” Her jaw twitches. “You mean the one you killed our best fighter for?” He’s too fucked up to let the acid in her tone have much bite. 

Hancock grins. “That’s the one. How about you do me a little favor and find out that sweet thing’s name.”

Fahr rolls her eyes. “You think that’s a good use of my time?”

“I sure don’t.” Hancock sits up, hands clasped between his knees. He beams up at her. “But I’m asking anyway.”

Fahrenheit’s back a few hours later, looking even more radiantly pissed than when she left. He’s gonna have to ask around to get the full story on _this_ mood. “It’s June.” She says, gritting her teeth. Hancock sits up, a little dazed. “Your girl. Her name is June.”

He grins. _June._ Sweet like a summer day. She looks like a June, now that he’s thinking about it. He reaches for one of the bottles on his coffee table; doesn’t give a shit what’s inside as long as it burns like motor oil. “My girl, huh?” Has a nice little ring. He could use a girl, for a couple nights at least. Especially one as pretty as that. “You tell Whitechapel Charlie that _my girl_ drinks for free tonight. Compliments of the mayor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So I took a lotta bit of liberty with my Sole Survivor. June is Nora’s black sheep, troublemaker sister and her relationship to Sanctuary Hills, Boston, Nate, and Shawn will be a little different than the canon takes. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that the "hazy blue" eyes in-game are supposed to be about chem addiction, but I've always imagined something different.

His scouts see June coming a mile off. She’s out by Postal Square, pistol tucked into her belt, shearling jacket hanging over the shoulders of her vault suit, both of ‘em beat to hell. She looks a little petrified, a lot out of her element. Still. After all these weeks. She’s still in the company of that feral but strangely doting little mutt too, but this time with a very familiar synth in tow.

Hancock meets them at the entrance to Goodneighbor, leaning jauntily on the gate, running the sharp end of his knife along each leathered finger. “Fancy meeting you here.” He croons for her, never taking his eyes off the blade on his skin. She beams. He can feel it without looking. There’s something blooming in his chest. Pride maybe. That she knows her way to Goodneighbor. That she keeps coming back.

He invites them to stay. Not in the Rexford, but in the Statehouse. With him. Offers up some liquor, saves the chems. Normally he wouldn’t do that. Normally when he’s got a broad all squared away like this, the chems would be the first thing on the menu. But…he’s hesitant. Doesn’t think too hard about why. Offers her a shower when she looks curiously over at his collection of needles.

She takes it. Doesn’t even hesitate. They’re similar like that, he can tell, a real knack for chasing pleasure. After that very first night, good ole Charlie told him she’d nearly cleaned the bar out. A real hedonist. And something else. When she comes out scrubbed clean, looking soft all over, he reaches for the best bottle of wine he’s got. Almost on instinct. They _are_ his guests. And it’s good to see Nick, even if the new cracks in his synthetic skin give Hancock the willies. Pot, kettle, black.

The wasteland is starting to get cold. It’ll probably snow soon. That glittering greenish white that makes his teeth zing, so radioactive he feels almost superhuman when he stands out in it, lets it fall on his skin. Hancock has Fahrenheit light the fireplace. He scrounges up a blanket for his shivering little vaultie. She ignores it, stalking around the room like a cat. Nick’s going on about something or another and Hancock just lets his head loll around on the back of the couch, trying to follow her nimble little movements around his stateroom. She could be robbing him blind and he’d still like to watch. So he’s being a letch, sure, but she’s playing along. Shooting him heavy glances, dancing her fingers over all his shit. She takes one of his candlesticks so firmly in her grip that his hips twitch. Heady stuff. Extra nice with all the jet he’s been shooting this evening. Makes everything go slo-o-o-o-ow. It’s good vibes all around. So he’s all the more surprised when she drops her little act, gulping loud enough that Fahrenheit hears it from the hallway. Pops her red head in the doorway to see what all the fuss is about.

June’s caught her reflection in one of his dusty mirrors and he looks up in time to see her recoil from it. It’s a reaction he knows so well that he flinches, mimes her expression before he can stop himself. He lived that shit for years. Patches of his skin hardened and burned; the whites of his eyes turned bloody red, then pitch dark, black and unrecognizable. Every day he’d wake up and search for something awful, some new horror on his own skin. It’s been years since his body finally stopped changing. He’s made his peace. Mostly. But he’s still a ghoul, radiating poison, a warped freak. Self-loathing still fits easy, like it seems to on her now. Hancock narrows his eyes, studying her reflection, trying to find the thing that’s spooked her. He can’t. He leans back and worries what’s left of his lip with his teeth. Maybe he should just ask her. It’s that kind of night, really. Chatty. _Intimate._

Nick beats him to the punch. Hancock figures that makes sense. They’ve been traveling together for weeks, seem to be riding on the same wavelength. Funny, since they seem to be about as different as two people can be. Still. Makes sense that he would know all her little nuances. Hancock doesn’t like the way jealousy coils in his gut. “Still not used to it?”

Her long, slender fingers ghost just below her eyes, softly brushing the skin there. “No, I’m not.” When she’s not putting on that flirtatious little act, her voice is somber, a little gravely. It’s damn pleasurable to get to hear it. Damn pleasurable to watch as she lets her guard down in his house. Hancock shakes his head like it’ll clear the chem fog out. He wants to pay attention, wants to be up to speed. “Always catches me by surprise.”

“What we talking ‘bout here?” Hancock splays his legs out and bounces a bottle of whiskey on his knee. He’s trying to play it cool, but that last hit of jet is fucking him up a little. He takes a long swig of booze to try and settle himself down.

“My eyes.” She turns away from the mirror and folds herself into the chair opposite him. She’s waifish, he thinks, willowy like he ain’t never seen in the wastes. Hancock doesn’t imagine a figure like hers lasted very long after the bombs fell. Not practical. She’s a pretty little relic.

Hancock _did_ notice her eyes that first afternoon in Goodneighbor. Pretty much right away. Baby blues, but not like any he’d ever seen. Frosted over like panes of glass in a rad storm. Sometimes it’s hard to track where she’s looking they’re so cloudy. He didn’t think too much of them at the time, really. He figured that maybe all pre-war broads had eyes like that. Hell, how was he supposed to know? Kinda seems like a dumb thing to think now that he’s considering it. “What about ‘em?”

“They didn’t used to be like this.”

“No?”

She laughs in a sort of wounded way that hits him right between the ribs. “Do these look normal to you?”

Hancock chuckles. “Look around sister. You think I’d be in any position to tell you what is and what ain’t normal?” She doesn’t laugh like he wants her too. Just frowns and chips away at his end table with her nails. Nasty habit. Sometimes he forgets that she’s a little feral. He shouldn’t though, not with how awful quiet his warehouses have been since he asked her to clean it out. June ain’t shit with a gun but she seems to be brutally efficient at sowing chaos. 

Nick cuts in. “Docs in Diamond City think it’s a side effect of the cryo.” Ah yes. His little frozen popsicle. Sometimes it’s hard to square that June is older than him. Older than almost anybody he knows. On ice through the whole war. Through everything. She has a glow that isn’t radioactive. Young and bright and alive. Hancock figures she’s the only person alive in the whole Commonwealth who wasn’t born and bred malnourished. Though she’s looking a little scrawnier these days, a little thinner in the face. He notices that she’s snubbed the roast brahman he laid out for them, running those delicious fingers instead over the sugary, and highly fucking irradiated, treats he’s got on his desk. Hancock frowns, narrowing his eyes to take a closer look at her. Her gums are looking a little pale, like she’s soaked up too many rads and he’s starting to think that this shit is all she eats. He imagines her out in the wastes eating only snack cakes. Sick and starving and miserable and he’s suddenly trying to figure out if he can convince her to stay in Goodneighbor. Just for a little while. _Shit._ Hancock can’t believe he’s over here fretting about some broad’s nutrition. He ain’t got the time no matter how pretty her lips or her freckles or, goddamn, her fucking long ass legs are. _Fuck._ He should be figuring out how to position this, how to use her to gain an advantage, to gather information. Instead, he fumbles around in his side table drawer for the radaway Fahr stashes there. Tossing it to her with a wink. 

June catches it, cocks her head at him. He likes the shit eating grin she’s got on her face sure, but it unnerves him how quickly her moods can change. “Aw, you worried about me, Mayor Hancock?”

He grins, lights a cigarette, lets the cinders clear the air. “Who me?” The smoke comes out the holes where his nose should be. “Nah, you seem like you got it covered, sunshine.” She’s got a pretty little blush at the nickname. He could get used to _that_ real easy. “Know how to use it?”

She weighs the drip bag in her hand. “Yeah, I think so.”

“She’s resourceful, she’ll figure it out.” The old synth ashes his cigarette. Hancock can tell he’s working through something in those gears in his head. The detective leans forward, tenting his fingers. “Speaking of resourceful. You owe me a story, June.” She cocks an eyebrow and Hancock finds himself leaning forward too, taking another swig of whiskey. “Vault 81. You told the Overseer that you’d gone down like, and these are your words, a junkyard dog when the bombs fell. That true?”

June shrugs. “True enough.” She says it so somberly Hancock knows she ain’t lying.

He wants the story, but he wants to see her smile again more. Wild that even though he barely knows the girl, he so badly wants to please her. He’s always loved a risky drug. “Scrapper even before the wasteland, huh?” There they go, those pretty, pouty lips. She tucks her tongue a little between her teeth, delighted. Her eyes crinkle when she smiles and, when she really gets going, really breaks into a grin, those eyes go even frostier. It’s the reaction he was hoping for and it goes straight to his gut.

Nick swirls the whiskey in his glass, looking contemplatively down at it. “So, I’ve been wondering.” She hums for him to continue, reaching over and taking a swig from Hancock’s bottle. He winks at her and she preens. “What was your plan?” June cocks her head, waiting for him to clarify. June does that. Just lets the conversation flow around her. Hancock figures she knows that everyone’s looking at her anyway, knows she can wait for the conversation to shift inevitably back toward her. Valentine doesn’t seem to notice what’s passed between the two of them and maybe that does something to Hancock too. So even as the old synth keeps droning on, Hancock’s eyes are only on her. “Were you just gonna run back outside? What with nukes falling like raindrops?”

June snorts, breaking the gaze she’s been holding with Hancock. “No, of course not. I knew I was finished.” Her nose twitches like a little rabbit. She’s looking off-center and she frowns before she can catch herself, before she can shift back to the flirtatiously neutral expression Hancock’s started to know so well. “I just figured that if they were going to lock me in some glass coffin, I’d at least make them work for it.”

“And did you? “The jet is wearing off now and Hancock reaches for a nearby tin of mentats. He’s trying to pull himself out of whatever orbit she’s got him caught in.

She winks and it pulls him right back in. “Had to strap me in.”

“Atta girl.” He rolls the tablets around in his mouth until the chalky, grapey flavor coats his whole mouth. “So you kept your eyes open?” Hancock’s pieced it together now. The high is making him feel creative, real intellectual, and he figures the icy fog in her eyes is exactly that. “Why?”

“I thought it was the last thing I was ever going to see.” June fingers the syringe of jet on his side table, rolls it across the surface of her palm. “I wanted to see it.” Her voice has dropped a couple octaves, husky again, Her shoulders are so tight Hancock can see it from where he’s sitting. She’s trembling a little, like just the memory is making her cold. Hancock wants to rub his hands on her, warm her inch by inch. Christ, it must be the chems making him feel like this. Some off combination of chemicals “Besides,” she says with a wry smile, “I’ve always loved a good show.” He’s listening to a goddamn tragedy, but she’s delivering it like a comedy, light and punchy. Her recovery is so good that Hancock nearly misses the little twitch at the corner of her mouth, the slump she has to pull herself out of. Those eyes do her big favors: conceal whatever her easy charm can’t. But Hancock sees it, the pain roiling under the surface. She’s complicated in ways he can’t even begin to imagine. He supposes he already knew that. Supposes that’s why he invited her up here in the first place. Why he keeps opening those gates every time she comes rolling into town.

In the end, Hancock can’t convince her to stay. She acts amused that he’d even try, but that pretty little blush she gets when he asks tells him all he needs to know. He wants to do all kinds of bad things to her, but, weirdly, _worryingly,_ mostly he just wants to be sure she’ll make it back to Goodneighbor in one piece.

He lurks on the balcony of the Statehouse after she leaves. For days, weeks. Coming out in the morning, pacing and smoking until late afternoon. The town notices; seems spooked. _The people need to see me_ , he tells Fahrenheit. It’s a convenient little lie. Not a very convincing one either. They both know what he’s doing: waiting, hoping to see a little blue dot out beyond the city walls. He takes the leads on some of his patrols aside and tells them to keep an eye out for a sweet little thing in a vault suit. Finds himself both disappointed and relieved when they come back and report nothing. More than once Fahrenheit asks him what the hell he thinks he’s doing, wasting resources like that. And she’s got a fucking point.

He tries to settle his confusion about this girl the only way he really knows how: by jacking off. Figures his cock will set his wayward brain straight. He’ll close his eyes and imagine the tight little apple ass of hers in that suit. He imagines running his hands over it, squeezing until he can feel her heartbeat in the tips of his fingers. He imagines her pretty lips opening up for him, kissing the head of his cock, looking up at him, wanting.

The fantasy usually ends about there, when they make eye contact. After that, he can only think of her in the vault. Arms outstretched, fingers pressed into the glass as it freezes slowly over. Eyes open in terror, or defiance, or both. Hancock wonders if she screamed.

How long has it taken her to carve herself out of the cryo pod? How long until she realized she was the only one left alive? He imagines her stumbling around the empty vault, two hundred years older than when she saw it last, surrounded by corpses and rad roaches. What did the sun feel like when she first dug her way out? Did it hurt? The way the new world looked must have. And there she was, that slip of a thing. All alone in the rubble. It really kills his damn mood when he starts thinking shit like this.

Hancock’ll sit up in bed and rummage for some medex. It’ll numb him out until he feels frozen too. And then he wonders if it was painful to freeze like that. He’d see her at Third Rail a few times, palling around with MacCready. She’d wink at him from across the room, flirt with all the raiders daring enough to try and talk to her. But sometimes, when she thinks no one’s looking, she’ll hold herself so gingerly, like she’s in terrible, terrible pain. Hancock wants to hold her. Goddamn, he can’t remember if he ever wanted to just hold someone. And when he slips off into the oblivion of sleep, he sees June, breathing frost in that metal coffin, skin cold and pale, but not yet dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	3. Chapter 3

When he sees June again, winter has the Commonwealth tightly in its grip; a layer of ashen snow blanketing everything. She’s at his gate, munching on a box of sugarbombs. Nick’s not with her anymore. Nobody is. It’s just her and that mangy pooch of her standing in his square and sister is looking scrawnier than he’s ever seen her. Shit, the dog looks like he’s been eating better than her. Hancock gives her another once-over, notices a bleeding ulcer on those pretty lips of hers. Too many rads. He can see _that_ from a mile away.

“That shit’ll kill you.” Hancock reaches for the box of cereal, but she’s too quick for him. June spins away with it, popping a few more glistening kernels into her mouth. He watches her wince at the end of the spin, fingers making a move toward her side. She winks, like she remembers Hancock’s still looking, but it’s a bland little gesture. Tired, weak Her eyes are blank, bottom lip trembling like a caught little animal.

“Doubt it’ll get its chance.” That low voice again. She’s not putting on any airs for him now and if she hadn’t shown up looking like this, Hancock might have been flattered.

But he ain’t flattered, not with the way the circles under her eyes look like bruises. “No kidding. I can’t smell the rads on you from here.” She flinches. “You trying to look like me?

Her nose twitches. “I’m here to apologize.”

“Oh?” He’s been expecting her, _this._ But she’s a couple days late, and this apology is coming quicker than he thought. Always keeping him on his toes, this broad. She narrows her eyes at him, the last little sparks of that temper flaring, so he cuts the act. “Heard you blasting through the rubble from here. Not all that subtle.”

She shrugs, but he sees just the faintest twitch on one corner of her mouth. “I knew it was a stupid plan even before I figured out it was you we were ripping off.”

Hancock saunters a little closer, his hands crossed loosely over his chest. He watches her eyes flit to the knife tucked in his belt. “So why do it?” Her eyes flit up to his, those icy baby blues. A little crowd’s gathering on the edge of the city center. Hoping for a show no doubt. Probably expect Hancock to beat the living shit out of her. Word had gotten more than around his little kingdom about his vaultie and all the trouble she’s gotten into as of late. And not the kind of trouble Hancock is particularly fond of. Hell, he probably _should_ beat the hell out of her. ‘Specially with the way she’s looking at him now. A little too defiant for a girl who just reduced the most powerful ghoul in the Commonwealth’s strongroom to rubble. But mostly Hancock just wants to take this production inside. Because the sun is going down now, a few flakes of snow drifting in the chilled air, and the cold might not bother him much, but June’s got a little shiver going. One he really isn’t all that interested in seeing. But June ain’t having it. She ignores him when he gestures toward the Statehouse, holding herself like she might break, her pooch sticking close.

It occurs to him that she’s probably afraid of what he’ll do once they’re inside, worried that he’ll hurt her. He figures she thinks being out in the open’ll keep her safe. She’s wrong. On both accounts. He ain’t planning on hurting her, but if he was, nobody in Goodneighbor would say a damn thing about it, public square or not. “I’m sorry alright. Christ, will you let me apologize for shit’s sake.” 

Hancock dips his head so his lips are real close to her ear, lowers his voice. “You hurtin’ for caps, sweet thing?”

June presses her hand against his chest to put some distance between them. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to notice that she’s got her fingers up close and personal with some of his most gnarled, rad burnt skin. There’s an intimacy to that touch that makes Hancock’s brain shoot blanks, his whole focused narrowed now to those pretty, slender fingers of hers. She curls them into a fist and softly pounds it against his chest. “Try to sound less like a complete thug, why don’t you.”

Hancock’s ruined lips twitch downward; he clears his throat. “June.” The soft way he’s speaking to her now seems to only unnerve her more. “You know I ain’t mad, right?”

She blinks at him like he’s the dumbest piece of shit in the entire Commonwealth. And hell, maybe he is. Fahrenheit certainly thinks so. “You’re not?”

“Nah. You did ole No Nose in pretty good, so why don’t we call it even, huh? That settle alright with you, sister?”

June rocks back a little, eyes going a little wide. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” It comes out with a pained little laugh and, shit, does this girl look tired. Like she hasn’t seen the business end of a bed in days. She dirty too, grimy. Hancock frowns. Why the hell is she out here alone?

“You look like shit. Seems to me like you’ve been punished enough.”

She smiles that wry little smile, her mood shifting again, that veil falling over her eyes. “Such a charmer.”

Still though, that smile goes straight to his cock and he returns it with a grin. “Always.” June laughs, looking off to the side, a little demure and _goddamn_ now it’s not just his cock that’s getting worked up, a warmth blooming in his chest. A wind rolls through town, the sharp tang of radiation in the air, and Hancock watches June shiver, pulling her ratty coat closer around her. Hancock makes a decision. He’s good at that. Without giving her a chance to fight him on it, he hoists her pack off her shoulders and slings it over his own. “Come on sunshine, let’s fix you up.”

With a dose of radaway in her and a good scrub in his tub, June’s looking almost like the vaultie he remembers. She’s definitely acting like it: crawling like a cat over his furniture, lithe and pretty. She won’t sit still. As usual. But he much prefers this to the ghost who showed up at his gate that morning.

Hancock doubles up on mentats, forgoing the whiskey he’d been looking forward to all day. He needs to be goddamn smart about this. There’s an itch at the back of his brain that started the moment he got wind that June was palling around with Bobbi “So, you low on caps?”

Her hesitation is so brief he almost misses it. June throws her long, golden hair over her shoulder, looking back at him from under her lashes. “Never was very good with money.”

“Seems like it.”

June settles onto one of his chairs, gazes over it at him, resting her head on her arms. Her hair is curling as it dries, pretty little waves that spill onto the red upholstery. “So, are you seriously not mad at me?”

Hancock chuckles, shifting forward on the couch, hands clasped between his splayed knees. He was mad, actually. Righteously fucking pissed. When he found out it that it was June slumming it with Bobbi he about goddamn lost his mind. It wasn’t betrayal really, but a sort of wild insecurity. A doubt that ate at him. Fahrenheit’s _I told you so_ bit hard. But even so, the idea of icing his pretty little vaultie made him feel…something. Something he hadn’t been all that interested in figuring out the contours of. So when word got back to him that June shot No Nose right between her yellowed eyes, he’d cooled it. Probably would have cooled it either way, honestly. Sister has a way of bending him in her direction. June offing that woman, though, that was a touching display of loyalty he wasn’t entirely expecting. It felt vindicating. Still feels vindicating. “Nah, I’m not mad.” June narrows her eyes at him, like she doesn’t quite believe it. Hancock doesn’t move a muscle and, after a long stretch of silence, June seems satisfied that whatever punishment she’d been expecting probably isn’t coming.

When she moves again, he knows she’s heading for his drawers of snack cakes. She gets this look when she’s about to eat. He’s seen it before on ferals. “Come here.” She startles, halfway out of the chair. “You’re gonna have a drink with me.”

“And if I don’t want to” She straightens up and he can tell, the way he can tell with stray feral cats, that she’s about ready to start yowling and fighting, looking like a petulant child.

“Then don’t.” The cap on his bourbon comes off easy, he leans back against the couch, spreading himself wide, and takes a long pull, wiping his mouth with the sleeves of his coat. “No skin off my nose.” He chuckles at his own joke. “But you’re not gonna eat that shit, understand?”

He can almost see the small hairs on her neck standing straight on end. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” He takes another nip. “You wanna eat like a rad roach, that’s your business, but that’s my food and I ain’t given you permission to have it.”

“Fine,” her voice wavers. She must be fucking _starving_ to sound that small, that helpless. His gut twists, he takes another nip. “I’ll go buy some off Daisy”

His chuckle this time has an edge. “Sure you will. With that windfall from my strongroom right?” She looks so dejected that he cools it a little, softens his tone. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya. Now come here.” He can see that temper flaring, a dangerous, impulsive little thing, but she sits down across from him anyway, tucking her legs in a pretzel under her. She’s got these long fucking limbs and she’s always doing these crazy things with them. Graceful like he ain’t never seen. Hancock can’t take his eyes off her and the way she’s looking at him now makes him want to reconsider his plan. Hell, the wasteland is tough enough. If she wants to eat herself to death in a haze of rotten sugar and radiation, then who is he to stop her? She sniffles and a thin line of blood trickles from her nose to her lips. She wipes at it, eyes widening once she sees the blood on her fingers. _Goddamn it._

“Listen, why don’t I have one of my boys cook you up something that won’t melt your skin off, huh?”

She crosses her arms. The pooch startles, sensing her change in mood, and fires a single warning bark in Hancock’s direction. He bares his teeth at it, grinning. “What’s this all about?”

“I’m gonna feed you good and proper.”

She cocks an eyebrow at him. He can see her receding behind that carefully crafted front. She even looks lighter, like she’s locked part of herself away. All that weariness, that fear, that anger. It’s all gone now. It’s Hancock’s turn to be unnerved. “Are you wooing me, Mayor Hancock?”

“Nah, I’m caring for ya and you should be goddamned honored. Ain’t every day the mayor of Goodneighbor plays mother hen.”

It’s a little thrilling when she eats because he tells her to. Yeah, Hancock’s used to ordering people around, people jumping when he tells them to jump, but it’s different with June. She’s a special kind of wild and, as he chews on the feeling in his chest, really tries to take it to pieces, he realizes he doesn’t just want her to do what he says, he wants her approval. He can practically hear Fahrenheit hissing about how dangerous that is, to feel that way. It doesn’t interest him like it should, not when June’s picking at the roast brahman with her fingers, leaning forward so he can see the curve of her tits in that suit.

He’s spending so much goddamn energy ogling her tight fucking body that it takes a minute for him to realize that she isn’t actually eating any of the food. “What’s the problem, sister?”

She picks at a piece of the meat, sniffs it, then sets it back down. Feral things shouldn’t be this pretty. “Everything here tastes so weird.”

Hancock leans back on the couch, getting a better look at her. “You’re kind of a brat, ain’t ya?”

She leans down to scratch the pooch behind his ears. “Oh, for sure.”

Hancock grins. “You want to tell me why that is?”

June narrows her eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

He spreads his legs, trying to look real casual-like. He’s lost his touch with this, got too used to brute force, to the power of his own name. He tries to lean back into the finesse that got him here to begin with.“Tell me about yourself, sunshine.”

June seems genuinely thrown off her game. “Are you serious?”

Hancock pops a coupla mentats into his mouth. “Oh, I’m dead serious, sweet thing. Seems like we’re settling in for the night, don’t it?” June looks out the window like it’s just dawning on her that she’s been here for hours, that it’s pitch dark outside now. “Let’s have a chat.” She looks back at him, her eyes big and round and searching. She looks real young like this, sort of startled. It stirs something in him that he’s too fucked up to try and name, so he just falls back on what he’s good at: running his mouth. “So where you from, huh?”

He doesn’t really expect her to answer, sort of expects them to keep this banter up all night long. Cat and mouse. Dodging each other. Maybe a little part of him hopes they’ll drum up so much tension they may need to find a way to work it all out. But she seems to want to talk, seems a little relieved even and Hancock abandons those thoughts, much to his cock’s chagrin. He wonders if anyone’s asked her shit like this. Valentine for sure, but Hancock figures that probably felt more like an interrogation. He likes the idea that this doesn’t feel like that to her. “I’m from California.” She sniffs, looking a little off-center. “Southern California.”

“California.” He cracks open a beer and leans back, his whiskey bottle empty beside him. “Huh, read about that in a book once.”

June snorts. “You read?”

“Well, of course, sugar. Ain’t much else to do at the end of the world.” He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “And I’m gonna choose to ignore your implication with that one.” The beer tastes a little turned, but he doesn’t much mind. “So tell me, are all California girls as beautiful as you?”

She smiles, head cocked. It’s different than the other smiles she’s given him. “Yeah, all of us. You’d lose your mind.” She suddenly frowns, eyes darting toward the window. “It probably doesn’t even exist anymore, right? Probably got blown off the face of the planet.”

Hancock sits up and passes his beer to her. _That_ question has disarmed him. “Hard to know.” She takes a few sullen sips and he’s not sure if he should try to change the subject or press on. But, hell, he’s never been good at this delicate shit, so he just rides the energy and keeps asking. “So how’d you end up in Boston?”

“My sister.” She picks at the skin around her thumb, a little trickle of blood snakes toward her palm. He has half a mind to take her hold of her hands, put a stop to that destructive shit. But the jet he took earlier has him practically glued to the couch. Pot, kettle, black. “Nora.”

“Pretty name.” She passes the beer back to him. It’s a little weird, honestly, to be alone here with her. He can’t remember the last time he was alone with a woman for this long without fucking, knows he is toeing a dangerous line. Head, heart. All of it. His tin of mentats is empty which is poor timing, because he can tell he’s circling a dangerous topic and he needs to be smart. It’s pretty much a fucking given that her sister is long fucking dead, not sure what she’ll do if he sets her off. Not sure really even wants from her. “She living in Boston, then?”

“Was yeah.” June seems to be trying to figure out what to say too. He gets it. There’s probably a lot of shit he wouldn’t understand, shit that doesn’t exist anymore. She takes her lower lip between her fingers, tugging a little. “I was here for a visit. When the bombs fell, I mean”

“From California?” 

“From New York.”

“The city?” She nods. “Well all be, I know that one.”

June grins. The room’s back to normal, the air light and easy again. “Greatest city in the world.”

“So the books tell me. What’s a girl like you do in New York City?”

“I was a dancer.” Hancock whistles. “Not like that you fucking animal.”

He chuckles, leaning down to light another cigarette. The room’s a little hazy now, filled with smoke and vapor. “What kind of dancer were you then, sweet thing?”

She shrugs, “for shows.”

Hancock isn’t sure if she’s trying to keep him at arm’s length or if this is just another thing from before the war that he doesn’t understand. “Shows huh?”

June just shrugs. She’s suddenly somber. He can barely keep pace with her moods. “It’s kind of a blessing really. That I was only here a few months. That I never got to know Boston.” Hancock stays silent. He’s not sure what direction she’s trying to take this, and he doesn’t want to trip up. “I think it would be a lot harder, if this was a place I’d really known before the bombs.” Her lips are trembling, hands curled around each other at her chest. It’s hard anyway, he can see that. It’s so, so hard and he can’t really understand it, but it makes his chest tight, makes it a little harder to breathe. She looks exhausted, running on fumes.

“June.” She perks up, like she’s just come out of a trance. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

For once, she doesn’t fight him. Just wipes her eyes with the palms of her hands and stands. “Yeah, that sounds good actually. I could use some sleep.” She looks back at him, that long hair slipping over her shoulders again. “Thanks.” He raises his beer at her, tips his hat. Her smile is weak. He watches her head out into the hallway sort of in a daze, the pooch padding behind her, ever doting. It’s a sort of funny feeling that she knows where she’s going, that she’s so familiar with his place. June likes the mattresses up in the attic room. He remembers that from the first time she stayed in the Statehouse, her and Nick. It’s the windows up there, he thinks. Sometimes she acts so much like a damn cat that he can imagine her perched on the sill of one of them, watching the city from above. Maybe it makes her feel safer to be that high up. And she _is_ safe here, even if she doesn’t know it. He’d fuck up any sorry son of a bitch that tried to get up those stairs to her. _Goddamn,_ these are _not_ the thoughts he should be having. Not with the Institute knocking on his door, not with Sinjin picking off Hancock’s best guys. He presses the beer to his temple. It’s lukewarm but the condensation on the outside feels nice on his skin.

Hancock lays back and kneads the tough flesh between his eyes. He’s been scheming even if he didn’t know it, all day, trying to figure out a way to follow June back out into the wastes. Trying to figure out why he wants to do that in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: graphic description of suicide

Damned if Hancock knows how the hell he ended up back out in the wastes, chasing some pre-war tail, doing shit like finding some kid’s lost pet. He might say that June can be very persuasive when she wants to be, but, shit, he’s the one who offered. He tries not to think too hard about why she agreed so readily, gets those impure thoughts running rampant and he can’t deal too much with that in the close quarters they’ve been keeping.

Can’t say he regrets tagging along, though. The view from behind June is mighty fine and the conversation ain’t bad either. And it sure doesn’t get boring. To his surprise, Junie’s got her hand in every pot in the Commonwealth. The world’s most reluctant, chaotic do-gooder. And she _is_ trying to do good, he sees the right away, which makes him feel…some kind of way, a little warm in the chest. So yeah, she’s doing good. It’s the execution that sometimes that could use a little work. June’s a pretty shit fighter, actually. Nervous, chaotic, prone to freezing up. Hell, Hancock can’t figure out how she managed to survive this long on her own.

After a month or so, they ended up working out a system. June sticks to the shadows, picking off people from a vantage, lets him do the dirty work. That feels mighty nice, he discovers. He likes the way she’s started to depend him, even if he doesn’t want to really admit how much he’s started to depend on her too. Sometimes he feels like a bodyguard, sometimes like a wasteland translator. There’s so much she doesn’t understand, but he’s learning too. She’s doing something more complicated to him, something he has trouble putting his finger on. He feels like a different John Hancock when he’s with her, he feels a little like the man John McDonough might have wanted him to be. He doesn’t linger long on thoughts like these, not good for the system. Besides, he can barely keep up with her as is. She’s a little ray of sunshine. Bright and beautiful and impossible to predict. She slips through his fingers so often, but she always comes back. She’s messy, but it works. Her shit works and _they_ have started to work too. They’ve got a rapport, a system.

So no, he can’t complain. Not even today when she’s got him mule-ing enough fire power to level Boston. No, it ain’t a bad day. Sun’s shining, not a cloud in the sky. Not too hot yet. Just right. Almost summer. Christ, he can barely believe it. Seems like yesterday that she showed up that first time inside his city. He glances over at her. She looks no older, unchanged by the wastes, like maybe the cryo has done something permanent to her. Maybe she’ll stay this way forever. She catches him looking and grins, leaning back on her hands.

June loves the sun. He learned that real quick. Seems to almost need it, preening like a goddamn bird when it’s out. Today she seems especially happy to be out in it, unzipping her suit a little to let its rays warm her skin.

They’ve been nursing a bottle of wine they’d filched from a raider’s camp a ways back, passing it back and forth. The broken overpass where they’re sitting has a great view of the Easy City Downs and June seems to find the robot races sort of charming. Hancock wishes he could head down and pay Eager Ernie a little visit, place a few bets, but he’s not about to drag June down there, too many prying eyes and quick fingers, and he’s not about to leave her on her own either. The overpass is gonna have to do.

Hancock watches the race for a while before he notices that June’s dozed off. She’s resting on her arms, hair flowing over the metal guardrail where she’s laid her head. He pauses, wine bottle to his lips, and fights the impulse to drag his rough fingers through her hair, to pull her over, let her sleep right there in his lap. He shakes his head. No use entertaining thoughts like those. And much as he wants to just let her snooze like this, it ain’t safe, not with the raiders finishing up at the Downs. He nudges her awake, trying not to let the soft way she moans go straight to his cock, and helps her to his feet. She yawns, stretching out. “Who won?”

“Lady Lovelace.” Hancock brushes some dirt off her suit and she lets him, She’s pliable like that when she’s just woken up, searching out his heat. He knows that this shit right here is special, that he’s probably one of only a handful of people on the whole goddamn planet who gets to see this part of her.

With the caravan workers, she’s strategically flirtatious, with the settlers, she’s friendly and chatty. That’s her real talent. June’s a charmer. But in the early morning, or just before she slips off to sleep, she’ll look at him with the softest eyes, boneless on whatever mattress or sleeping bag they’ve found out in the wastes. She looks at him like she trusts him most in the whole world and his chest squeezes when he thinks about it. He’s a bad man by most anybody’s estimation, but she doesn’t seem to think so, especially not in those fleeting moments.

In the light of day, she is never so vulnerable. He takes it when she can get it. Like right now, sleep still heavy on her. She lets him brush a few strands of hair from her face. ‘Which one is that?”

“The one you wanted.” She grins and, before long, starts to shimmy down off the overpass. That’s a nice view too.

So, yeah, Hancock’s day is going pretty good. Sunshine, wine. He sneaks a few more touches in as they travel, just teasing, and she mostly lets them. Because they’re harmless, they both know that. Or, at least, he hopes she knows that. Hancock’s pretty much abandoned the idea of fucking June, even if his cock furiously disagrees. The positioning ain’t good. Much as he’d like to get between those pretty thighs of hers, at this point he’s pretty sure his brain might end up involved, heart too god forbid. And he can’t. _Cannot._ Because even though June sometimes looks at him like he’s the only damn man in the Commonwealth, he doesn’t need anymore distractions. And besides, he aiint really sure he knows how to behave. Doesn’t want to ruin this good thing, this easy thing.

He’s rolling all this shit around in his head so hard that he ain’t really paying attention to where he’s going and he runs into June. Literally smacks right into her back. “The hell?” He straightens his hat back on his head. “The hell you doing, sunshine?” It only takes him a single glance to see he needs to change his tone.

She’s frozen, completely still, hands bunched into fists at her sides. Her bottom lip is trembling, jaw so tight that the veins in her neck are taut under her skin. “Where are we?” He’s never heard her voice sound this thin, this strained. “Where is this?”

Hancock glances around to get his bearings. He narrows his eyes, trying to figure out what the hell’s spooked her. “The airport, far as I can tell.”

“I’ve been here.”

He glances at her wrist. “Not according to the pip boy, you ain’t.”

“No.” Her voice has an echo, a steady, eerie cadence. “Before.”

He frowns. “Before?”

“The war.” _Oh_. Well, shit. Hancock’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth. Useless, fucking useless. “I stood right here.” She lifts her hand up, palm out toward the river. “There used to be a wall here. Big windows. I was standing here. Right here.” She looks pleadingly at him, like she really wants him to understand, like she _needs_ him to understand. He tries to, tries so hard. “I was waiting for my sister here. The flight from New York landed at nine, but my sister couldn’t get a sitter for Shawn until eleven. So, I waited all morning. Just sat here, looking through these windows. The river was just the same.” She rests her fingers on her lips, the other hand still reaching out like she might pull away this world and reveal the old one, just through the sheer force of her will. “There was a building across that way. It’s not there anymore.” Her voice rises until she’s almost yelling. Hancock looks furtively around, worried her voice will carry and attract something nasty. “There were trees here. Big, tall trees.” She looks back at him, her whole body shaking. “There used to be tress all over. And people. Kids! I remember watching them playing out on the grass by the river.” Her voice gets high and shrill. “Oh god, oh my fucking god.” She drops to her knees, digging desperately through her pack. “God. Fuck!”

Hancock’s on his knees in an instant, leaning down so their faces are level. “Take a minute, sister.” Her hands are rattling, her whole body stiff and shivering. “Hey.” She ignores him, rummaging through her pack, tossing things out, not caring where they land. Hancock grabs her hands, pulling them roughly out of her pack. “Hey! Take a goddamn breath!”

June goes rigid, startled, eyes big as goddamn plates. She looks at him like she’s never seen him before in her life. He’s the one who freezes now, worried that maybe, for the first time, she’s noticing that he’s a ghoul, the first time she’s really seeing him. This is it, he thinks, she’s going to bolt.

But she doesn’t. She slumps a little, eyes fluttering closed. “I need some medex, please. I just want my heart to slow down a little, please, please.”

“Come on now, you know you don’t need to beg me for shit like that.” He releases her hands and slides the pack closer. “Just give me a minute, alright?”

June glances around the airfield, holding herself so tightly she looks like a scared, little kid. “Sometimes I forget this is forever.”

Hancock doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just gets to work, tapping the syringe until the liquid settles. “Want me to do it?” He nods at her. “Hands are shaking pretty bad.” She looks a at them, blinks, then nods, unzipping the top of her suit, exposing her shoulder. Hancock runs his thumb over the vein under her collarbone. She’s so soft, god she’s so soft. He shakes his head, trying to focus. “Let’s get this over with, huh? Breathe in.” He positions the needle. “Breathe out.” He slips it in on the exhale. She only flinches a little. “There’s a girl.”

“I wasn’t here for a visit.”

“What’s that?” he slips the needle out, runs the pad of his thumb over the little bead of blood on her skin. 

She looks him right in the eyes, jaw still tight. “In Boston. I came to help with her kid.” She gulps. “My nephew, Shawn.”

“The one the institute’s got?” Now _this_ is a subject they rarely stumble onto.

She shrugs, frowning. “Maybe.” She looks down at the dirt between them. “Nora didn’t want a kid, really. It’s just…things were different then. It was kind of expected. And Nate,” She purses her lips like she’s tasting something rancid, “my brother in law. He really wanted them. Kids.” She trails off, looking out into the middle distance, out at nothing. “He fought in the war, you know. Like, the one before the big one.”

Hancock grunts, shifting a little where he’s sitting. “Heard of it.”

“Yeah, well it fucked him up. I guess I didn’t know him all that well beforehand, but he…he was fine.” She shrugs. “Fine enough.” Hancock zips her suit back up, tosses the used needle into the brush. He’s trying to pay attention, but his nerves are going wild, wishes he could settle them with some medex of his own, but he knows that would only send her spinning. “I saw him just once after he got back from the war.” She frowns “He was so different.” June full on shudders, fingers digging into her thighs. “He blew his fucking brains out in the front yard.” Hancock grimaces. There’s that laugh of hers again. Sharp, nervous. Almost hysterical. “Literally in front of the neighbors. Took a shotgun and just,” she presses two fingers under her chin.” Hancock gulps. “Nora fucking lost it, you know? I mean how could you not?” She’s still not looking at him, still looking off at nothing. “She didn’t want the kid, didn’t want to live in some fucking suburb and now, all of a sudden, the only reason she agreed to any of that in the first place is splattered all over the grass.” Her breathing is erratic, really all over the fucking place, and without Hancock holding her shoulders steady she might have already collapsed.

“Jesus Christ.”

“She begged me to come to Boston, begged me to stay for a while. She just needed someone outside of Sanctuary Hills to be there, I think, to remind her there was a life outside of this place. And I needed…I was…” She leans a little more into his hands. “It’s just so funny. We thought our lives were over. I felt like it was the end of the world when I left New York and then,” she laughs, “and then it really was.”

“You’re still here.” It’s all he can think to say.

“I know.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “I know, isn’t that crazy? Like I shouldn’t be. I should be dead. Every day I just think, okay this is it, my borrowed time is up. The universe is going to right itself.”

“Nothing bad is going to happen to you.” His voice is steady. That mayoral tone he’s perfected after so many years. Assured, strong.

She looks up at him. “You don’t know that.”

“I sure fucking do.” Hancock squeezes her shoulders. “’Cause I’m not gonna fucking let anything happen to you. You understand me?” And there they are again, those sweet, morning eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	5. Chapter 5

If June feels any kind of way about what happened on the airfield, she certainly ain’t talking to Hancock about it. And that’s just fine with him. Hancock’s perfectly happy to go back to their light banter, feeling a little like he poured part of his heart out for her and a lot like he hadn’t really meant to.

Which is probably why traveling this far northwest with her feels a little risky. A little close to the bone. Way back months ago, before he and June had developed…whatever it is they’ve developed, he sent a couple of his guys to keep tabs on her. Try to find out a little more about the girl he couldn’t seem to get off his mind. They’d reported back that she’d been spending a lot of time way up on the corner of the Commonwealth, in some dilapidated nowhere row of houses. He’d chewed on that for a few weeks, trying to figure out why the hell a sweet thing like her would be slumming it in a shithole like that. But by the time he’d learned enough to ask her about, they were on the road together and it hadn’t seemed to matter all that much anymore. It’s not something he’d though about in a while.

He probably should have figured they were going somewhere with history, though, even before she tells him they are. She’s a little too comfortable, a little too familiar with the terrain. June ain’t normally like that out in the wastes. He tries not to pry when she stops just ahead of some rickety, makeshift bridge. She’s really fucking going at her bottom lip, chewing it almost bloody. Hell, he wishes she’d quit that. Her lips are too pretty for this shit. “So, uh, this is Sanctuary Hills.” Hancock squints at the settlement coming into view over the bluff. He took some medex that morning and it’s slowing him way the fuck down. He wracks his brain to try and remember. “My sister lived here.”

Oh. Right. _Shit_. He looks close at her, trying to figure out where she’s at. But hell, when June wants to put up a front, there ain’t no breaking it and her front is a mile high today. “You gonna be alright?”

“Yeah.” She sort of shrugs, looking kinda small when she does it, looking really young. “It’s cool. Just weird for me, I guess.”

He rolls his neck, the crack makes June flinch. “You wanna talk about it?” He doesn’t particularly want to, doesn’t really know what he’d say if she started. But he would probably lay down and die if June asked him to. Fahrenheit would _kill_ him if he knew how goddamn besotted he’s gotten with his vaultie. And they haven’t even fucked, Christ. But he ain’t ever been one to dwell, doesn’t really want to worry about what he is or isn’t doing.

“Nah,” she starts across the bridge. “Just wanted to let you know.”

They’ve done the place up pretty nice from what he can see outside the gate. Big, tall walls with a few stuttering turrets up top, a couple settlers that look suspiciously like former raiders perched beside them, guns drawn. Some yahoo in a cowboy hat greets June on the other side of the gate, standing a little too close for Hancock’s liking. But she seems happy to see him and the man smiles brightly in his direction, extends an eager hand, so Hancock can’t be too pissy about the whole thing. He introduces himself as the leader of the Minutemen and Hancock side eyes her. “You a part of the minutemen, sunshine?”

She shrugs. “Why not.” He grins. He likes her cheeky.

The place is bustling, people and animals and cookfires that smell mighty nice, but June ain’t stopping. She seems determined to get somewhere quick and Hancock has to hurry his pace to keep up. The pooch falls back beside Hancock, tilting his head so Hancock can scratch his ears. They’ve got a rapport now. The pooch nips. Mostly.

June slows as they turn a corner. Most of the houses here have collapsed in on themselves, just ruins, but Hancock is keeping an eye out, trying to figure out which one might have been hers. He ain’t sure why it matters, but suddenly it matters a whole, but before he can figure out how he might try and ask, his thoughts are interrupted by a sudden metallic humming. Hancock glances up, fingers drifting instinctually toward the blade at his belt. But he quickly abandons it. The sound is coming from a service robot barreling toward them. The bot does a little twirl around June, chattering excitedly. Hancock moves a little closer. The thing looks beat to hell, but its voice is high and cheery, the same clear, crisp British accent he’d heard on a hundred other Mister Handys. “Miss June!” It exclaims. “Welcome home. I believe the Missus will be home soon for supper.” It spins a little, delighted. “She and young Shawn went out for a stroll in this beautiful weather.” Hancock looks around. A radstorm is just finishing up, that familiar zing still in the air. It’s shit weather, even for a ghoul.

June lays her hand lightly on the robot. “Sounds good, Codsworth. Thank you.”

The robot swivels to leave, but then catches sight of Hancock, a mechanical crunching sound that makes Hancock flinch as it changes its trajectory. “Oh! Is your friend joining us for dinner?”

June looks over her shoulder at Hancock. She’s got this look in his eyes that he cannot for the life of him figure out. “Yeah, I think he is.”

“Wonderful! I’ll set out another plate.” The robot whizzes off into one of the collapsed houses.

Hancock saunters up beside June and lowers his voice. He hesitates a beat, finger twitching around air, trying to figure out what he should say. “You wanna tell me what that was all about?” He’s always been a bit of a blunt instrument.

“That’s Codsworth. My sister’s butler.” She’s evading the question, but he ain’t about to let it drop, keeps in step with her.  
“Yeah, figured that much out.”

June shrugs. “Don’t really know what you’re asking.”

He scowls at her. “Come on, now, sister. This beautiful weather? I could hear your Geiger counter singing from Goodneighbor.”

She scowls right back at him, but he can tell, by the way there’s a smile just in the smallest corner of her lips, that he’s winning. “His wires get crossed sometimes. He thinks he’s back, you know,” she shrugs again, “before.”

“And you just lie to him?” It isn’t really an accusation, just a question, but he can almost see her hackles rising.

If he’s pissed her off, she’s decided not to let him see. Settles back into herself and throws him a lie. “Sometimes I wish someone would lie to me.”

He bumps her shoulder. “I can lie to you all day long, sweet thing, what do you want me to lie to you about?” Her grin is almost bashful and he can’t help but grin back. Friendly, he reminds himself, just friendly. He sure wishes his cock would get with the program too. It’s been harder to keep it together these days. He’s not really used to hemming his urges in. Hancock watches her sweet, little hips rock back and forth ahead of him, thankful he’s got this damn flag draped across his hips. He clears his throat. “So this was your spot huh?”

“What? This neighborhood?” He nods, looking around. The place looks like any other hellhole out in the wastes, if a little better lit and fortified, but Hancock tries to imagine what it would have been like when June first came here all those hundreds of years ago. He imagines it was something like those old billboards scattered around the Commonwealth, all green grass and cookie cutter houses. He can’t imagine June there, has a much better time placing her in the Commonwealth now and he tells her so. She laughs and stops at a circle of houses, scuffing her shoes on the crumbling asphalt. “Yeah, honestly it feels better to me now than it did then.”

“Sounds like it was a real trip.” It’s a little flat. She’s got that tone of voice again, the one she had a the airport.

Her eyes flit from house to house and the corners of her lips twitch downward. “It was awful.” They stay silent for a few moments and then she grins, looking up at him. “Want me to introduce you to the neighbors?”

Hancock has his hands in the pockets of his great coat, leaning jauntily to one side. All of June’s shit is addictive, but he can’t get enough of her when she’s like this. Mischievous. Bratty. A little manic. Trouble. _His_ trouble. She’s got that glint in her eye. “Yeah, sunshine, show me around.”

She twirls to her left and points to half-collapsed house with a big cartoon skeleton decal peeling off the splintering front door. “Mr. Baker. Divorced, two kids, I think? Did something with robotics.” She looks back at him. “Definitely on downers, but managed to show up at the front door every time my sister left the house. Rumor mill, you know. These guys all thought they could get something from me.”

“Why would they think that?” She just shrugs, but Hancock can see her jaw working a little hard. He frowns. “He touch you?”

“Nah,” she flips her hair over her shoulder. “not really.”

Hancock stands a little closer to her. That really pisses him off. Just the idea of it. Even if he isn't sure exactly what she's telling him. Damn, he hates shit like that. Hates feeling like this. :ike he might like to crack a head, like he might really like hurt somebody. He tries not to let her see, winks at her instead. “A real letch, huh?”

“Yeah, but he wasn’t even close to the worst asshole who lived here.” She spins around and Hancock follows. This house is still standing, but just barely, yellow paint chipping off the siding. The windows have been blown clean out. “Mr. Whitfield. Wife, grown children. That one,” she glances back at him, “a real fucking pervert.” Her face is totally neutral as she says it, suspiciously neutral. Hancock wants to take her aside, to call a timeout and ask what the fuck she means by that, but she’s too quick for him, heading down toward the row toward more houses. “Asshole.” She says, pointing to a pile of rubble. “Asshole.” Pointing now at a house across the way with no roof. June swivels again, this time gesturing toward a house that is nothing but concrete foundation. “Mrs. Able called the cops on me once. Said I was playing my records too loud.” She laughs, but it sounds far away, like she’s laughing from before the war. And maybe she is. Being here seems to have done something to her, but Hancock can’t tell if it’s good or not. “All of these people were such assholes. They were assholes to Nora. And, god, did they hate me.” Her mouth goes a little slack. “Not sure I can really blame them. I’m sure they heard…” She shakes her head, swallowing hard, “whaytever, they sucked.” 

Hancock spits on the ground. “Fuck ‘em.” June smiles at him. He looks back at the crumbling foundation and his chest tightens. This place is safe, he can see that, tactically sound. In the field beyond, he can see lush green, a few brahman roaming among corn and razorgrain. But he’s uneasy. There’s something _wrong_. He just can’t put his finger on exactly what. Maybe it’s her. Got to be.To anyone else she’s the picture of ease, but he knows her now, knows her probably better than she wants him to, better than he ever expected to. She’s been more relaxed in a super mutant camp than she is here, standing on a walled-in street in a place she’s known for so long. June looks small and young and very, very afraid. And he feels impotent beside her.

Mama Murphy ain’t much of a cook, that’s for sure, but it’s nice to have some warm food. Nicer still to be sitting beside June in front of the roaring bonfire they’ve got going in the middle of the settlement. It feels a little like she’s chosen him and, maybe he’s just imagining it, but a couple of the guys around the fire seem a little put out by seeing them together. It sure is good for the ego. And, hell, the beer is good and the fire is warm and the night is clear and cool. The stars are brilliant above them and Hancock can’t remember the last time he sat back and just looked up at them. They’re beautiful. Beside him, June shifts. _She’s_ beautiful. Christ, if Fahrenheit could see him right now. Eh, he figures it doesn’t much matter. She’s watched him do stupider shit, much stupider shit. Hancock glances over. Her hair looks gold in the light of the flames, but she sees too, when she wipes at her cheeks, dark circles under her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Hancock takes another swig of beer and nudges her. “Hey sunshine, why don’t we call it a night.” June nods, letting him help her to her feet. Preston and a few others around the fire exchange glances, but June doesn’t seem to notice. Hancock certainly doesn’t give a shit what they think.

Away from the fire, Sanctuary seems a little more desolate. Most of the settlers have already gone to bed, their shacks quiet and dark. The sounds from around the fire echo in the empty night, fading as they walk. He can hear he whir of the turrets up on the wall, the quiet whispers of the guards. He walks faster, trying to catch up to June’s sudden quick clip “So what? We headed to your sister’s old house?”

She spins to look at him, walking backward before turning back away from him.“Hell no. I’ve got a spot on the other side of town.” He lets that settle, feeling a little unnerved again.

The house she’s picked is mostly caved in. June’s carved a narrow path through the rubble to the building’s sole intact room. Hancock has the practically crouch to make his way to the end. The floor’s littered with magazines and half-melted candles. A dozen empty snack cake boxes are piled in one corner. She’s strung up a few bare bulbs. They keep the room almost too brightly lit.

He follows her toward the mattress in the corner of the room. She’s pushed it up against the one wall with no windows, as far from the door as possible. The place looks safe, private. A little obsessive maybe, but adequate. Hancock figures he’ll head back to the fire and have a few more beers. Hell, he’ll probably just crash out there under the stars. “Well alright, sister. I’ll see ya in the mornin’.”

“No.” He slows, glances back at her. She’s standing in the middle of the room, a helpless look on her face. “Stay here.” And then, in a voice so small it almost breaks his heart. “Please.”

Hancock swallows, hands in the pockets of his overcoat “Now what for, sunshine?”

“I don’t want to be alone.” She looks furtively around the room. “Not here.”

Hancock gulps. He ain’t totally sure he has it in him to be the gentleman he needs to be with her, not this close, not with this much privacy. Last thing he wants is for June to wake up to him humping her leg in his sleep or some other feral shit. “You ain’t alone. You got the pooch.”

It’s stunning how quickly she recedes into herself. June practically recoils from him, eyes going distant. Her face is chillingly neutral. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Hey now, hold on just one minute.”

She waves him off, sitting heavily down on her mattress. “No, I get it. You should probably-“

He drops down beside her on the mattress; her eyes widen. “Hush now. Just wanna make sure you know you ain’t need to try and please me, alright? You want me to stay, I’m here, but I can find my own bed just as easily. You understand me?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is low again, betraying nothing. Hancock lays on his back, hands folded primly over his chest. His body and brain are on two different tracks and the energy it’s taking to keep his damn cool makes him feel like he’s about to short-circuit.

He turns to look at her. Her string of lights cast strange shadows on her back. He clears his throat. “June?” She mumbles a response. “Why don’t you want to be alone here?” He knows she’s still awake, can tell by the way she stiffens at the question, but she says nothing. He rolls onto his side to face her. Even in the half-darkness, he can see that she’s shivering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3\. These are crazy times and I hope all of you are managing to try and stay safe, sane, and well :)


	6. Chapter 6

Watching her get fucked up that first time almost does him in. Hard as a fucking rock, pulled so taut he might snap. Back in his stateroom for the night, back on his turf. They’re sitting too close for him to keep the ideas he’s been tossing around all these months at bay. She’s on her shins, he with his arms around the back of the couch, sprawled out. The light from the city outside casts red shadows over her. Obscene the way she opens her mouth, the way she lets him put the inhaler in her mouth When the jet hits she shudders eyelids fluttering, lips just parted. Hancock imagines that might be how she looks when she cums. One for the memory den that’s for damn sure. “That feel good, sunshine?”

“Yeah.” She breathes it out with the last of the vapor. June rests her hand on his thigh to keep herself steady. Every muscle in his body clenches.

Hancock would be lying if he didn’t say he felt just a tinge of guilt, being the one to put that first inhaler to her lips. She’d been curious, more than usual. Sanctuary had left her…different and she’d asked him, looking up through her lashes, if the jet might take the edge off better than her usual cocktail of medex and wine. He should have said no. He hadn’t.

But June’s boneless on his couch now, crawling over to hit it again when the that fizzling high starts to fade. and that guilt makes a hasty retreat. She’s so beautiful in the low light. And with her armor off, she looks so fragile. And some sick part of him, a big part of him really, likes that, likes the way she’s looking at him too. Contented, really, chilled out like she never is out in the wastes. It’s good to see her relaxed, especially in his house, the seat of his little ragtag kingdom. He feels like a real provider and if that ain’t good for his cock, fucking nothing is.

Somehow as the night progresses, she ends up straddling him. She does it mid-sentence, real casual. One minute she’s across the couch from him, the next she’s sliding her thighs over his, ruffling his shirt with her pretty fingers. Hancock hopes she doesn’t hear him gulp. He is earning a goddamn medal in restraint tonight. Every muscle in his body tensed up because if he doesn’t keep himself in check, he might just roll over and mount her. Hell, that’s his usual MO and it reminds him, jarringly, that it’s been months since he’s fucked. Not since that time she’d shown up alone outside his gates. Jesus fucking chrisy. Had it really been that long? Hancock frowns, thoughts coming roaring back to life. June rolls her hips. Hancock’s brain goes blank.

He leans back against the couch and lets his arms spread wide on the back of it again, trying to put just a little space between them. June smells like his soap and, fuck, that’s really doing it for him too. She takes his hat off him and puts it on her head, leaning back, her frosty eyes glittering as she looks at him. At then, like she ain’t thinking, June reaches out and runs her fingers along his scalp, one side of her mouth twitching upward. Hancock’s pretty much stopped breathing. He’s got some real rad burnt skin up there. But she doesn’t seem to really notice and _that_ is blowing his fucking mind. “Drugs are different now.”

He blinks at her, the fact that she’s spoken at all takes a minute to settle in his brain.His ruined lips twitch. _Keep your cool, Hancock_. “How so?”

“These feel like medicine.” June’s fingers skim down behind his ears. Hancock grips the fabric of the couch to stop him from reaching for her. She squirms in his lap. Hancock sucks a breath through his teeth. “Or, I don’t know. They feel like they’re not supposed to be for fun.” She laughs quietly to herself, eyes glassy. “Like we’re using them wrong.”

“And how did they used to feel, huh sunshine?”

June frowns, eyes a little unfocused. Sometimes she gets twitchy when he asks about before. Hancock half expects her to deflect, but the jet’s loosened her tongue. “Different, I don’t know. They used to be plants. Or, like, some of them did, I guess.” She cocks her head, eyes still faraway. “You would have liked weed, I think.” She smiles to herself. “Yeah, you would have liked it a lot.”

Hancock digs his fingers into the back of the couch again. He wants nothing more than to reach up and pull her hips flush to him. God, he bets she’s wet, knows jet does that to women sometimes, bets he could just slip inside her. She would look _fucking magnificent_ on her back, legs hitched up over his shoulders. Hancock rolls his neck, trying to keep his cool. “Yeah, why’s that?”

“It makes you feel really good. Sort of..” She flutters her hand in front of him, an almost dreamy movement.

“And these ain’t?”

She’s looking at him again, head cocked, smiling. It’s half between her real one and the one she puts on for show. “Oh, sure.” She shifts her hips in his lap and he tuts at her, a little freaked that she’ll feel the way his cock has been barking to get out of his pants for the better part of an hour. “You know what?” Hancock parts his lips in anticipation, muscles so tight they might snap. “I bet you could make me feel real good too.”

He about chokes. Sure, they’ve been flirting. Sure, he’s beaten off to the fantasy of her on her knees in front of him more times than he can count. But to actually fuck? To do that dirty deed with this pretty pre-war relic? There ain’t no way. June’s too high, too fucked up That’s the only motherfucking explanation for why this sweet thing would even consider wanting his gnarled ass between her legs. And he really is trying to be a good boy, a gentlemen even. He tries his best to ignore the way every cell in his irradiated fucking body is just howling. Hancock shifts underneath her, trying to get a little more leverage. “Now hold on there.” Hancock is honestly fucking stunning himself with this level of restraint and more than a few voices in his head are cussing him right out. “You, sunshine, are thoroughly and beautifully fucked up and I ain’t interested in taking advantage.” June’s eyes snap back, suddenly lucid and hard. Hancock takes her by both wrists and, with every ounce of self-control he’s got, dislodges her from his lap. “Let’s get you to bed, huh. The sun’s almost coming up.” The energy in the room has shifted, maybe it had been shifting all now and he’d just now noticed. But it’s flattened now. _June_ is flattened.

“Whatever you want, Hancock.” Her voice is that high, flirty little tone she used to use when they first met. When she didn’t trust him. She’s hiding in plain sight and he’d forgotten this about her, this shell she’s got. He misses her immediately, feels like a goddamn bastard in every conceivable fucking way. The way she’s looking at him feels like heartbreak because she’s not really looking at him at all. Her eyes a dull, blank color. Hancock wants to kiss her now, maybe more than he ever has. He thinks it might not be so bad to fuck like this after all, all hopped up. He could be real gentle, make her cum slow and soft on his bed. Yeah, he could do that. Wouldn’t even have to fuck her, could just use his fingers. Shit, he bets he could make her fucking shake with just a coupla his fingers. But she’s already yanked herself away from him, backing away toward the door. 

He crosses the room in a few, quick strides, and June flinches like he’s feral. “Come on now, Junie.”

“No, you’re right.” She’s coming down from the jet now, shaking a little. “I should go.”

_That_ snaps him to attention. They’ve bickered before. Even had a couple rows after long, hard days in the waste, but she’s never threatened to go. Never once. “Whatcha mean? Where to?”

June glances around the state room like she’s seeing it for the first time. She’s hugging herself like a little kid, looking off center. “I just need to get out of here.”

Hancock watches June from the balcony, hitting one pump of jet after the other until his limbs are numb and the sky is pulsing in a kaleidoscope of noise and color. He needs to be out of his fucking mind to even try to get any goddamn sleep tonight. He watches her head down the alleyway toward the Rexford, still holding herself like she might crumble to pieces. It’s cold out tonight, a real chill in the air and he knows damn well the Rexford never did repair their windows. Hancock should run after her. Should ask her what the fuck just happened. He should, but he doesn’t. Hancock’s always been good at running away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	7. Chapter 7*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have taken ~just a touch~ of liberty with how the memory loungers work

The memory den wasn’t made for this, Hancock thinks, for this level of suffering. Junie’s agreed to it because Valentine said it was necessary, because everybody seems to think she’s gotta, but she looks like she’d rather be just about anywhere else. It’s a look that, despite everything, is reserved for him. Hancock gives her shoulder a reassuring squeeze before Irma beckons for her. She looks back at him and smiles, touches him briefly on the arm.

Despite the scenery, it’s a relief to know they’re all good again. It’d been almost a month since the last time he’d seen her, that night in the Statehouse when she’d offered herself up to him on a platter. He’d headed over to the Rexford the afternoon after with some snack cakes and mutfruit to make the beginnings of an apology and found that she and the pooch had high tailed it out of town just before dawn. Whoo boy, had he fucked that up. He’d learned his goddamn lesson about playacting the kind of good boy he ain’t, that’s for sure. Figured he might never see her again. Worked that particularly ugly feeling out of a system with a half dozen good citizens of Goodneighbor in his bed or on the wrong end of his fists and enough bourbon to close the Third Rail. So imagine his surprise when his June shows back up at his doorstep, Piper and Valentine in tow. Pooch too, of course.

Hancock figured he might try to play it cool and distant, feel out where she was at, give her the space to be the mercurial girl he knows damn well she can decide to be. But she wasn’t having none of that, came up to him with a grin and a quirked eyebrow. Maybe a little , hell, he ain’t ever been so relieved in his goddamn life. But she didn’t come to Goodneighbor just to see him, much as he’d like to pretend she did. And now here they are, crowded into Irma’s place, all somber as hell. Hancock takes a long drag of a cigarette, perched on the back of one of Irma’s velvet chairs, watching as Valentine explains something to June, one robotic hand on her shoulder. She looks young again, frightened. His fingers twitch.

Shit, Hancock has half a mind to put the kibosh on these proceedings right damn now and whisk June off the Third Rail. Apologize the best way he knows how and see if, a little more sober, June still wants him between those pretty thighs of hers. Hancock chides himself. What they really ought to do is talk. His least favorite activity with girls as pretty as June, but he’s desperate in an almost boyish way to clear the air, _really_ clear it. Not just some flippant unspoken forgiveness out by his front gates. He wants to tell her that some nights he’d dream of those early mornings when he woke up in a sleeping bag beside her, the rising sun casting gold over her as she slept. But Hancock chafes against thoughts like those, scare him just about shitless, and besides, June’s already being strapped in to the memory lounger. Hancock lights another cigarette with the burning tip of his last, bouncing his elbows on his knees. Piper glowers at him. He tips his hat.

The machine winds up, the screen Dr. Amani’s set up flickers a little and then, like one of those old movies, there they are. Inside his June’s head.

In the memory, June’s wearing some sweet little sundress, fabric so thin he can see the outline of her nipples, a floral pattern that skims down the smooth line of her hips. Hancock leans forward in his seat to get a better look. Two stiffs in helmets are dragging her along some rocky pathway and she’s kicking those long, tan legs like a wild animal. Hancock has to remind himself that he’s watching the end of the world and not some spank flick, but he’s so focused on how damn pretty June looks that it takes him a minute before he realizes how different the world is in her memory. It puts him on edge, actually, the way the trees are so full, how pristine the buildings are. He doesn’t want to look too long.

It’s easy not too, though, because June demands attention. She is losing her damn mind on these two pricks. Making a hell of a scene, even as the world around her seems to have gone woozy with panic. Hancock watches as people huddle outside their houses, shivering in each other’s arms, dark yowl, nipping at the air. June cries out; Hancock snaps to attention.

The soldiers have started up a dirt path, a cloud of dust following them as June kicks in their grip. She doesn’t stand a damn chance much as she seems determined to try and fight ‘em off. Hancock can see that from a mile away. Piper shifts beside him. He can practically hear her teeth grinding, glances over to see her curling her fingers into fists. June lets out another high-pitched, indignant noise and Hancock takes a long drag, leaning back in his seat, trying to let the anger that’s making itself real known inside of him simmer down some.

The soldiers pull June up onto the vault door. She’s still kicking and shouting and fighting but they swing her around like she’s no heavier than a rag doll. She hangs defeated in their grip, chest heaving as she tries to catch her breath. There’s a bunch of squares huddling en masse on the vault’s door. June’s experience seems to spook them even more, though Hancock figures it might just be the way she’s getting dragged. He narrows his eyes, trying to see if he can pick out a any of the pieces of shit June mentioned back in Sanctuary, but they all look the same to him. Scared, whimpering suits.

June balls her hands into fists and he can tell she’s about to start flipping shit all over again when the sound starts. It’s deafening, even in Irma’s little room. Like something being huge ripped right out of the ground, something heavy falling but nothing like that, worse than any of that, and then the sun does this funny little woosh and, all of a sudden, it’s brighter than it should be.

Hancock’s stomach drops, Piper takes a couple shaky steps back, and even Nick seems to be a little rattled, his gears clicking as he too steps backward. June’s jaw goes a little slack and Hancock finds his own doing the same. The assholes who dragged her to the platform just drop her now, fucking gobsmacked like the rest of them. June scrambles to her feet and over to a woman just a few feet away. Her sister, Hancock realizes. Nora. June told him once that they didn’t have the same dad and Hancock can see that pretty clearly. If Junie is all willowy, wispy trouble, her sister looks sturdy and reliable. They both have those big, pretty lips and same smattering of freckles, but Nora’s a lot older and her face has got a real severe look. Sharp features pulled tight with a worry Hancock bets rarely left her face. She’s got a sort of mousy brown hair that she keeps short and neat. Cuts a real professional visage that June, with her messy, golden curls, can’t quit manage. The baby’s sort of an afterthought, far as he can tell, clutched a little too loosely in Nora’s arms. It’s probably squalling, the way it’s face is all red and twisted, but nothing is making a dent in the sound that’s coming off that bright light in the distance.

June’s knees seem to sort of give and she clutches her sister’s arm, knuckles white from the pressure. Hancock follows her line of sight and his chest fucking snaps tight nails digging into the arms of the chair. He’s seen a lot of awful shit in his day, been balls deep in shit and blood and god knows what else, but this, _this,_ is a whole other goddamn animal

The bomb is churning the world, tilling houses and trees and roads up as it rolls toward them. Shapeless and diffuse. Everywhere, that familiar radioactive tang suddenly filling the memory’s air, and nowhere, just a shape, a mass, a threat. The June in the memory shuts her eyes and covers her ears with her hands and then she starts to scream. She screams as the platform descends, screams as the world around her starts to wobble, as things start to break, start to melt, start to disappear into the churning, screeching nothing of the blast. Hancock can’t stand to look anymore, tips the brim of his hat down and shut his eyes.

When he opens them again, the memory’s quieter. They’re in the vault. He can tell even though he’s never seen the inside of one. It’s a lonely quiet in there.

 _You gonna behave now, sweetheart?_ One of the soldiers shoves past her. June’s stopped screaming. She’s holding herself tight, blinking like she’s trying to wake herself up from a terrible dream. They aren’t trying to restrain her anymore. It’s pretty damn clear to everyone that this metal sink trap was a one-way trip.

 _Go fuck yourself._ Her voice is thin and quiet, doesn’t have any bite to it. Hancock feels a little twinge in his chest, tries to swallow down the feeling that’s rising up in him. He wants to reach out and touch her, wants to take her in his arms. He wants to break someone’s skull.

The man chuckles and nudges another guy in a white coat. _Watch out, you got a real firecracker over there_. He laughs back and Hancock’s fingers drift to the blade at his waist. They’d be squealers, he can tell. He spits on the ground. Valentines looks back, eyebrow raised, before they both turn back to June. 

She seems to have gotten her bearings and pulls her sister back, away from the crowd. _We can’t stay here_. Her voice is a low, fractured hiss.

Her sister has this real blank ass look on her face. She’s rocking the baby a little too hard, not even looking at him. June yanks at her sleeve and she finally glances down at her. _We don’t have a lot of options, June._

June’s eyes are darting now, her grip on her sister’s sleeve. _You don’t think this is weird?_ She lowers her voice. _These people. Do you not see how they’re looking at us?_ June sweeps her hand toward the metal staircase where a few of the soldiers and white coats are standing. Hancock thinks they _do_ look a little gleeful for the end of the world.

Nora’s eyes haven’t moved from the middle distance where she’s been staring since June started talking. _I just watched my home get nuked, June._ The tendons in her neck pulse and then she’s all barely constrained energy, glowering down at her sister. _Boston. Is. Gone. So maybe if you could, for one singular minute, think of anything past your own nose I would appreciate it._

June recoils like she’s been hit, but then doubles down, voice rising. _You were the one who thought this VaultTec shit was fishy. You were telling me just this fucking morning that-_

 _That’s enough._ June’s sis has the voice of a damn school marm and once she’s said it, June’s mouth slams shut. _That’s enough, June. You’ve thrown your tantrum. You’re done_. Hancock watches June’s throat bob as she gulps. Her eyes are aflame, fingers curled into tight fists. _I’m going to speak with these doctors and I’m going to try and protect you and Shaun, whether you want me to or not_.

June stays frozen as her sister walks away, just watches her go. The shaft they’d come down is starting to spin and Hancock can feel her rising panic in his own chest. The rest of the people who’d come down with her are just standing around looking like little caged pets, like children, and as Hancock looks back at June, he gets the distinct impression that she is about to lose her damn mind. It’s a look in her eyes that he recognizes. Like a cornered animal, like a spitting feral cat. He remembers that first night at the Statehouse with her. She’d told him they’d had to strap her into the cryo pod and it’s then it dawns on him that he’s about to see her last stand.

The memory goes sort of wavy, staticky, and Hancock realizes that here and now June is trying to wrestle her way out of the memory lounger. It makes a loud, sickening crack as she pries herself out of it, pulling the nodes off her head. She’s cussing like a raider, but shaking too much to stand and she tumbles to the floor. Hancock’s on her in a second, pulling her up onto his lap, arms holding her steady to his chest. She holds tight onto him, wrapping herself around his neck, and he can feel her shivering hard against him. “Alright, that’s enough.” His own voice sounds small and echo-y, like he’s back in the vault with her. Irma and the doc are hovering, even Kent’s stuck his head out to get a better look, so he switches to the voice he uses on the balcony of the Statehouse. “I said that’s enough. Everybody out.” Irma snaps to attention, hurrying Dr. Amari toward the back room and Kent slips back to his room.

Valentine crouches down where the two of them are sitting, unperturbed as usual. “You alright, kid?”

“Fuck no, I’m not alright.” June’s shaking a little less, but she’s still got her hands tight around Hancock still, her head tucked in the crook of his neck like she’s breathing him in. Hancock can’t remember the last time he was held onto like this, can’t remember if he’s _ever_ been held onto like this. He wonders if she knows she’s doing it, tries not to think about why the question makes him ache.

Hancock smooths June’s hair back a little, trying to soothe her. She lets him, holding tighter. He cannot fucking believe she’s letting him do this after disappearing for all those weeks and he tries to be good, keeps hands above the neck. “Let’s get a drink in you, huh. Let’s get you fixed up.”

“Yeah, okay.” She lets him help her to her feet, but she doesn’t let go of him, leans against him as they walk away from the pods. When she speaks next, her voice is smaller than he’s ever heard it. “Hancock, I’m sorry.”

He slows, eyes narrowing. “Come on now, for what?” He puts his arm around her as they make their way to the door. Irma raises an eyebrow at him, but he just tips his hat in her direction.

“For bailing. Last time. The way I left…, I don’t even know why. I didn’t say goodbye. I mean to, I just…”

“Shit, sugar, don’t you worry your pretty head about it alright. I was the one who wasn’t being gentlemanly.” The night is cool, crisp. Doesn’t even smell too much like smoke or rads. It’s a damn nice night. “You’re here now and that’s all that matters.” Valentine sidles up to them, hands in the pocket of his trench coat, cigarette hanging from his metal lip. Hancock glances in his direction. It occurs to him, suddenly, that he hasn’t even asked why they’re here, what exactly it was they were searching for. He frowns. Fahrenheit told him one night, nursing the last of his burboun, that he worked better without June around. Things ran smoother, Hancock acted more like himself. He’d brushed her off, tries to brush the thought off again. “You get what you needed?”

Valentine shakes his head. “I can’t for the life of me figure out what the connection is.” His exposed hand creaks as he takes a few quick puffs. “I don’t understand why the Institute would want to be so sure she was in the vault. Common knowledge says it didn’t even exist before the war. But it must have. There’s no other explanation.” Hancock sniffs, a little relieved that it’s pre-war shit and not something kicking down his door now.

June’s quieter than normal and Hancock rubs her arms. “That’s alright. We’ll figure it out. Don’t need to do a thing about it tonight.”

A few mentats and a pack of cigarettes later, she’s settled. Some. Junie’s playacting her old self, cracking jokes, dancing in that slow, rocking way that has the whole bar watching her. Hancock sees right through it. Her jaw is tight and her cloudy eyes haven’t left the blank middle distance all night. He’s pulled taut enough to snap by the time she eventually settles at his table near the stage. She lets Hancock pour her a drink and busies herself with people watching. Anyone else might look at her and think she’s bored, zoned out, but Hancock knows she’s listening, thinking, trying to figure shit out. He wants to ask her what’s going on in that pretty head of hers, but it ain’t the right place, not here in the middle of the bar. They’re all trying to shake off the residue of what they saw in the Memory Den.

Beside him, Piper’s dozing off in her chair. Hancock caps his bottle of bourbon and leans his elbows on the table. “Getting late, huh? Let me puts you guys up in the Rexford. Compliments of the mayor.”

“Sounds mighty nice to me.” Valentine ashes his cigarette and nudges Piper awake. He whispers something to her and then helps her up. Valentine nods toward June. “See you up there, kid?”

“Yeah, yeah. Get some sleep.” June lights another cigarette and crosses her legs in her chair. Those long, wild limbs again. The air between them has shifted. He can feel that even with a head full of jet. “Rexford for me too then?”

Hancock licks his ruined lips. “Whatever you want, sunshine.”

June looks off in Magnolia’s direction, but Hancock knows better. She’s thinking, looking right through the wall. He’s about to say something snappy to try and clear the heavy air that’s sitting between them now, when her eyes snap back to him. “Take me home, Hancock.”

He frowns, ashing his cigarette. His heart is jumping, really careening around in his chest, but his mind’s hazy. He’s not sure what happened between now and just a few moments before, not sure what happened in the weeks she’s been gone, not sure what happened that night. Hancock likes, above all, a sure thing.. “And where’s that, sweetheart?” It’s out of his mouth before he can stop it. That old snarky standby.

The way her face falls is devastating. “Nowhere.” She stands, ashing her cigarette, and slips gracefully through the dwindling bar crowd.

He up in an instant, following her, takes her quickly by the arm and pulls her back toward him. She hisses like an angry cat, and tries to wriggle out of his grasp, but he’s stronger. “Cool it.” She struggles harder but he only holds tighter. “Hey, that’s enough of that, you hear?” The word are for her only, whispered hoarsely into her ear. He feels a tremor roll through her body, feels the soft pads of her fingertips, press against his ruined skin. “Come on home, Junie.” She twists away from him and this time he lets her go.

She stands a little bewildered, like she’s surprised he yielded, her hair wild around her shoulder, a pretty blush running down her long neck. But she recovers quickly, straightening up, scowling at him. “Don’t want to intrude on your night, Hancock.” She glances over at one of the women Hancock bought a drink for at the start of the night. Pretty scavver with a shaved head, great rack. A steady, if predictable fuck. “I’m sure you already have plans.”

Hancock saunters over, closing the distance between them. June puffes her chest out, eyes burning into his. He leans down so his lips are close to her ear. He feels like he’s gone a little crazy. The jet and the memories and the wild goddamn world he is living in where June has come back to him. He ain’t playacting a gentleman anymore, doesn’t want to. Doesn’t know if he even could. “I sure don’t. Not when you’re on the menu.”

He watches her heart “Oh, so I’m on the menu then?”

Hancock leans closer, practically growling. “Aren’t you?” She takes a deep, shuddering breath and he leans back. His eyes soften, hands tucked into the pocket of his pants. A hush has fallen over the bar but nobody’s looking in their direction. They know better than that. “Let me take care of you, June.” Her shoulders slump, eyes softening “You don’t got to do it all on your own.”

He watches every muscle in her body relax, watches her go soft all over. Her voice is low when she speaks next, low and far away. “You don’t want to take care of me, Hancock.”

Hancock takes a deep breath. The jet is fading, the room settling back into itself. He straightens up, looking down at her from the bridge of his nose. “I think I might, sunshine, I think I really might.”

He lays her on her back, palm firmly between her tits and sits back to just look. She’s got a body like he ain’t never seen; smooth and tight and so goddamn pretty. Her hair like a halo around her head on his pillow. _His_ pillow. _Goddamn._ Hancock whistles, grinning. “Shit, don’t got enough time in the world to do all the things I wanna do to you.” June shudders all down her body, and cants her hips toward him. “I haven’t barely touched you and you are rutting like a little animal, ain’t ya?” She watches him, eyes locked with this and rocks her hips again. “I ain’t ever been confused for a gentleman, June, I ain’t gonna treat you like those country club boys back before the bombs.” She laughs, breathless, and he laughs with her. It’s warning; a promise. A little jab. He watches her chest stutter, tits bouncing and reaches for her bent knee, running his thumb softly over her skin. She reaches between her legs for him. He leans out of her grasp. “Do you hear me, June?” 

“Yes, christ, fucking touch me, _please._ ”

“Please? Well ain’t that polite.” He lifts up one of her legs and presses a kiss to her ankle. “Such a sweet girl.” His voice darkens, teeth bared. “ _My_ sweet girl.” Her thighs twitch. Hancock leans down and kisses her between her hip bones. It’s wild, having her here. Naked and pliable. Wanting and desperate. _Fuck,_ he wants to do right by her, but he’s got blood pounding in his temples, his cock and he yanks her down the bed by her ankle. Her yelps turns into laughter that turns quickly, sharply to a gasp. He’s yanked her hips up, knees tossed careless over his shoulders. Hancock presses a kiss just above her clit, grins as shivers. “Well if this ain’t sweetest pussy I’ve ever seen in my life.” She groans, cants her hips toward him. He nips at the soft skin of her inner thigh. “Oh June, I’m gonna make a mess of you.” She cries out when his lips find her, loud enough for the whole damn Commonwealth to hear.

She’s as beautiful when she cums as he imagined she would be. Radiant, really. For as noisy and bossy as she’s been, she’s goes quiet when it washes over her, rigid, and then everything releases. Her “oh” is so soft, so warm, that Hancock can barely stand it. He ain’t ever felt like this with a woman and it doesn’t scare him like he expects it would. Doesn’t seem to scare her either Cumming does something to her. She pulls him close, pulls him right up between her legs. “ _Please,”_ she pants in his ear, “Hancock _please_.”

They don’t fuck like they’ve been playing. There’s no edge to it, no teasing, no back and forth. They fuck gentle, slow. She’s on her back, he cradled by her thighs. Chest to chest, her holding him so tight he can’t pull all the way out of her, has to fuck her deep and steady. It’s been a long time since he’s fucked like this and he sure as hell hasn’t had a girl kissing on him like she is. Not since he went ghoul. June kisses his neck, his jaw, the spot where his nose should be. And when she comes, whole body trembling, she pulls him over with her.

They lay like that for a long while, in each other’s arms. It’s only when she presses her face against his neck that he realizes she’s crying big, silent tears. He sits up, frowns down at her. She shakes her head, wiping furiously at her cheeks. He reaches down to smooth her hair from her forehead. That seems to have the opposite effect and shakes her head, covering her eyes with her hands, “hey.” He kisses her nose, her lips. “Hey now, what’s the matter?” 

She wriggles out from under him. “I just need some air.” She pulls her suit on in a quick, fluid motion.

Hancock frowns. “Was it too much?”

“What? No, god no. I just…I just need a little air.” She looks back at him, eyes cloudier than he remembers them being. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

Hancock knows before she’s even out the door that she’s bolting. He’s done it enough times that he can just sense it. She ain’t coming back. If it’s forever or just a little while, he can’t say but it hurts in ways shit like this isn’t supposed to hurt him. Not anymore. He wanders over and uncorks a bottle of wine. She’s probably in view, but he can’t bring himself to head out on the balcony and watch her go. It was nice, he thinks, nice while it lasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse any (more glaring than usual) grammatical mistakes or typos. These are strange times we're living in and my productivity has been a bit of a struggle. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading <3


	8. Chapter 8

She shows up two months later. Alone again. Full of rads again. Hancock ain’t gentle about taking care of her this time.

He strips her down while the bath runs. June doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move. Just stares off at the middle distance. She’s cold to the touch and as Hancock peels her vault suit down her body, he tries to figure out where the fuck she’s been. She smells bloody, filthy, like she’s been bathing in rads He holds her at arm’s length, takes a long look down her body. Beat to shit. That’s how she looks. She’s got a split lip and a nasty bruise on one cheek. He’d know a pistol whip anywhere, that drifter blood still coursing through his veins. Born and bred. Hancock runs his thumb gently over the bruise, watching as June’s eyes flutter at the touch. “Where ya been, sweet thing?” His voice is low, quiet. June’s eyes waver but that’s the only sign that she’s heard him at all.

He tests the water twice before he helps her into it. She shudders at the first step, at the steam, hissing as he lowers her down. “I know,” he purrs, watching the water go pink with blood, “I know.” Hancock crouches down behind her, sets his hat on the chipped tile floor.

Her body’s bad as her face. That caked mud comes off easy with some scrubbing but she’s no better under it. Got a deep, dark bruise on her back, a few on her arms. When he looks over her shoulder can see fainter bruises on her thighs, rimmed in yellow. His fingers twitch. He wants to turn her roughly around, to shake her by her shoulders, fucking rip the answers right out of her. Where the fuck she’s been, what the fuck she’s been doing to end up like this. _Why didn’t you let me come with you._ But he can feel the faintest tremor where he’s touching her and so, instead, he smooths his fingers up the back of her, stopping just at the nape of her neck, and says “lay back now.” She does, without a word. He ain’t ever seen her docile like this, ain’t ever seen her quite this worn out, even during all the months they were on the road together.

She moans softly when he starts to massage the soap into her scalp, hair tangling around his knuckles. June leans forward, resting her head on her knees. “Thank you.” Her voice is a thin, hoarse whisper.

Hancock swallows, his hand still on her back, her heart beating against his palm. Soapy rivulets run over his ruined fingers. “It ain’t nothing.”

Hancock has Fahr make a run on Daisy’s to find something for June to wear. She comes back with a plaid shirt so big it makes June look like a sullen, sickly kid. She’s curled into it now, holding herself tightly on the seat of one of his velvet upholstered chairs. Hancock takes a long drag from a cigarette. He’s brutally, unpleasantly sober. Sober as the goddamn day he was born. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and nods at the food he had one of his boys whip up. “Eat.” June’s nose twitches, but she doesn’t move. Hancock scowls. “Fucking eat, June, I swear to god.”

“I’m nauseous.”

“I’ll bet.” He pushes the plate forward, watches her flinch as the metal scrapes against wood. “And you’ll be a hell of a lot more nauseous if we start dosing you with radaway on an empty stomach.” June frowns but unfolds herself, leaning forward to take a couple tepid bites. Hancock sits back, ashing his cigarette on the table and taking a long swig of the whiskey he opened up that morning. June scoots to the edge of the chair, starts eating quicker now, coughing more than once than once when the food goes down rough. She’s acting, Hancock realizes as he takes another swig of whiskey, like one of those feral dogs who sniff around outside Diamond City, their ribs poking through their matted fur. It’s a kind of desperation he ain’t used to seeing outside junkie circles and he takes a quick inventory of her. Despite all the rads, her skin tone looks alright. None of that yellow jaundice of a real user. And he didn’t see any track marks on her in the bath. It’s a relief but it isn’t exactly soothing. “How the hell you get so pumped full of rads anyway?”

June’s eyes flit up to look at him. Her lips twitch. “I went to the glowing sea.”

Hancock pauses, bottle nearly to his lips. He sets it down, leans forward, arms resting on his knees. He tries, and fails, to keep the scolding out of his voice. “Now why in the hell would you do something like that?”

June pulls back from the food, back as far as the chair will let her go. “I think the institute is trying to kill me.” She shivers. “Or, I don’t know, something worse than that.”

All at once, Hancock is the mayor again. His thoughts spin to his patrols skirting around Brotherhood territory. His lead had reported increased activity. Across all fronts. Extra landings, a growing stockpile. And two weeks ago, one of his scouts spotted a bot out by Goodneighbor’s north wall. A second generation hunk of junk, sparking out of its severed right arm, mumbling staticky jibberish. Bad signs. All of them. He could feel the dread in the air as he stood that night on the balcony of the state house. Can feel it now in the smoke of his stateroom. June sniffles. The thoughts vanish. He lights another cigarette, the sound of the spent match echoing in the room, and leans forward again. “Ain’t no Institute in Goodneighbor, doll.”

June takes a deep, almost contemplative breath, and when she exhales, she opens her eyes, looking right at him. “I know. That’s why I came back.” She shakes her head, glancing over at the stateroom’s lone open window. “No, not just that.” June looks pointedly back at him and the weight of what she isn’t saying, of what he thinks she might want to say makes Hancock’s chest tighten.

His ruined lips twitch. He takes another long drag from his cigarette. The darkness outside is a dull blue, rimmed red at the horizon. Hancock feels a twinge in his chest, just the faintest pain in his neck. A storm’s coming. He could always tell. Even before he went ghoul. Something he got from his mother. He ashes his cigarette on the table. “Why don’t we get you fixed up, huh?” 

She’s got some color back. Looks a lot less pathetic with some radaway in her system. But she’s still on edge, maybe even more than when she first showed up. The meds do that sometimes, really ratchet your nerves up. And there was something buzzing inside June as he helped her up the stairs to bed, he could feel it.

So he’s not entirely surprised when, halfway through a hit of jet, Hancock finds her standing again in his doorway. Her hair is tousled like she’d laid tossing in bed, one shoulder of Daisy’s shirt slipping down her arm, the milky top of one of her tits visible even in the lowlight of the stateroom. Hancock sets the jet down, lets the vapor roll out what’s left of his nose. “Trouble sleeping, sweetheart?” June just shrugs, the wood creaking under her bare feet as she walks toward him on the couch. He feels glued to it, goddamned paralyzed as he watches her stop just at the foot of it, her naked shins bumping up against his pants. Her hair’s dried soft and wavy and it falls over her face as she starts to work the buttons of her shirt open. Hancock swallows hard, flexes his fingers. He’s heavy with the jet now, slow and hazy, and it feels, as she brushes the shirt off her shoulders, like a dreamy little trip. “What are you doing, doll?” His voice comes out in a rasp, heavy with the kind of bent longing that only jet gives him. She doesn’t say a word, just shimmies her underwear down those long legs of hers, flinching just a little when the fabric rolls over a dark bruise on her right thigh. Hancock reaches for her, fingers tracing the line of her hip. “Well alright then.”

The kiss is his first clue. Just a spark of something wrong that settles right at the base of his brain. The first time they kissed, smelling like the Third Rail, hot with desperation, she’d been almost ravenous. Biting at him, pulling him so close, so passionately that she’d left little half-moon grooves at the base of his jaw with her nails. This…this is… _dull_ , Hancock decides. Like reading about kissing in a book, like thinking about kissing in the distorted flatness after a bad trip. It’s all there – tongue, lips, she even nips him once or twice on the bottom of his ruined mouth – but he can feel her sitting heavy, sort of limp, in his lap. Hancock leans back to try and get a better look at her. Catches her eyes for only a second before she’s on him hard, grinding her hips now, holding his face tightly to her own. “Alright, _alright._ ” Hancock manages, his hands settling firmly on her hips. She rolls her hips again and he starts to hunt between her legs, finds his second clue that something is off. She’s wet, sure, but it feels…artificial. Strange. Like she’d spit on her fingers, brushed it between her legs. None of the sopping, dripping mess she’d been that night. But it could be the radaway, could be the goddamn exhaustion and Hancock’s cock has already taken the wheel, his hips canting up toward her.

He swirls a finger, teasing, threatening to push inside, and when she moans it’s so theatrical, so goddamn blatantly faked, that Hancock can’t stand it. He yanks her away from him, holds her hard by the hips at the end of his knees. She yelps, eyes wide, hands clasped at her chest. “Now what the fuck is this about?”

She blinks at him. Opens her mouth, then closes it. It’s late, nearly the early morning, and Hancock can hear the sounds of the crowd at the Third Rail breaking up from the stateroom’s open window. June’s eyes drift toward the sound, go hazy, then snap back to look at him. “What do you mean?”

Hancock narrows his eyes. “What are you trying to do?”

She swallows. “Fuck.”

His fingers tighten on her hips and he gives her a little shake, talking through his teeth now. “What are you trying to do?”

Her voice is small and thin, almost a whisper. “Pay you back.”

Hancock lets go of her, rocks backward, and tries to stem the tide of horror threatening now to overtake him. He’s high as a goddamn kite, brain moving slow as its ever gone, but when his emotions come rising to the surface, he feels small and sad and real motherfucking angry. He scoots back, upending her, watching as she tries to catch herself on the coffee table. “Is that what the first time was about, doll? Paying me back?”

She blinks at him. “No.” There’s still something hazy around her, but she says it with such a firm, convicted voice that Hancock settles some.

He reaches blindly along the couch for a bottle or a smoke and, finding none, sits back, still agitated. “Then what the fuck is all this?” For a second, June looks goddamn stunned. She blinks around the room from her spot on the floor, like she’s seeing it for the first time, like she’s just waking up. Hancock can see her heart pounding in her throat, he can practically smell her fear. And then she looks at him, so hard he flinches. And then she deflates and all that anger that had been rushing through him vanishes, replaced instead with a shame so powerful it nearly brings him to his knees. His voice softens. “ _June._ ”

She sniffs. “I’m sorry.”

“I ain’t asking for an apology.” He offers his hand and, to his surprise, she takes it, letting him pull her back to her feet, settling perched on the edge of the coffee table. “I’m asking for you to tell me what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours right now. What the hell all this is about.” Hancock reaches for a pack of cigarettes, slips one out and tucks it between his teeth, then offers her the pack. June shake her head, leaning heavy on her hands. The neon from outside the window skitters down her bare body. He fights the sudden impulse to drag his tongue down the trail it leaves between her tits, all down the taut plane of her stomach. June watches with interest as he strikes a match for the cigarette, watches it fizzle out.

Then she blinks, fast like she’s trying to wake herself up, looking away again. “I know I fucked up.”

Hancock takes a long drag, lets the smoke plume out his ruined nose. “Quit putting words in my mouth. You didn’t do shit.” She flinches. He softens his tone. “I just want to know what spooked you so bad all those months ago. What’s spooking you now.”

June reaches for her discarded shirt, pulls it around her but doesn’t button it. Her voice is far away, almost echoey. “Things weren’t all that different before the bombs really. I know men like you.”

Hancock’s lips twitch. “Men like me, huh?” He leans forward, looming a little, their faces close now. June arches away from him, but her eyes stay locked on his. He can see the muscles in her stomach pulse. “And what kind of man am I?” There’s an almost childlike softness in her face that turns quickly into rigid, palpable fear. Hancock recoils, suddenly furious with himself. This ain’t some drifter late on his chems payment, ain’t some Diamond City pig who’s wandered a little too close to Goodnieghbor turf. It’s June. “Hey now.” She shakes her head and he can see her eyes are watery now, threatening tears. He lays a hand on her knee, runs his thumb along the little indentation. “Hey now, come on. You know I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

She stiffens like a little animal. “Do I?”

“Yes,” he says in the clearest, strongest voice he has.

It settles her. He watches as her shoulders release, as she leans a little into his touch. Then she swallows hard, brushing some of that long, wild hair from her face. “Why am I here, Hancock?”

He frowns. “I think you’re the only one that can answer that, sweet thing.”

She bristles. “No, I mean why did you let me in?”

Hancock’s frown deepens, taken aback. “Sunshine, what the hell are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I let you in?”

“Did you think we would fuck?” Hancock pauses, nearly takes his hand from her knee. The jet fog is still intense, still slowing everything down and June’s too jumpy for that, moving too fast for him now. “You did, didn’t you? Thought we would fuck again. That’s why you opened the door.” Apparently decided, June yanks away from him, standing and pulling her shirt tighter around her. 

Hancock scrambles off the couch and grabs hold of June’s arm. She yelps and he softens his grip. “It ain’t that and you know damn well it ain’t that.”

“Don’t tell me what I do or don’t know,” she hisses, “you wouldn’t be the first man to fuck me over.”

“You think I’m trying to fuck you over, doll?”

June yanks herself out of his grasp but stays planted where she is. “What else would you be trying to do? All drinks are on the house in this town, everything’s got a discount. _Mayor’s orders._ I know the score. I know how this shakes out.”

Hancock bends down so his lips just brush against the shell of her ear. “And how does it shake out?”

She pulls away from him. “I..” Her lips shake a little, her eyes wavering. Then she takes a step back, rolling her shoulders to stand straighter. “It doesn’t matter.” Her eyes go unfocused, looking at an empty spot on the floor. “I know what I’m good for.”

He wants to ask her what the hell she means by that, but he can see she’s closing up, that she’s already said more than she meant to. And it’s late. And he can see the exhaustion just simmering in her bones. “I would hope you do. I would hope you _really_ do. And I would hope that you know I ain’t opening up Goodneighbor’s gates just because you’re a sweet piece of ass, you understand me?” One side of June’s mouth twitches up and Hancock feels his own shoulders release. He ain’t sure what the hell’s just happened. What the hell has gone on at all, but he can feel her mood drifting back somewhere better, can feel that old connection between them, forged on the road, strengthening again. It’s like she just needed to be reminded. “I’m fond of you, Junie.” He steps toward her, slowly, slowly reaches out to brush a few strands of hair from her face. She leans into the touch. “ _Real_ fond. And it seems like a lot of folk in the Commonwealth feel the same way.” She shakes her head, just softly. He brings his other hand to her jaw, lifts her so their eyes lock. “That’s why I open those gates for you. That’s why I’ll always open ‘em.”

Her eyelids flutter. She’s cold to the touch, leaning closer, seeking his heat. “I’m sorry I left.”

He runs his thumb along her cheekbone. “I said I wasn’t asking for an apology, doll.”

June furrows her brow, stepping closer. “I’m scared.” It comes out like a whispered confession, so quiet he ain’t sure if he was supposed to hear it.

“You’re safe in Goodneighbor.” _You’re safe with me,_ he doesn’t say.

She pulls away from him, gentler this time. “Can I stay here? With you. Just for a little while.”

“You can stay here as long as you like, you know that.”

She looks hard at him, then glances over at the door to his bedroom. “Can I _stay_ with you.”

Hancock cocks his head, really looks at her now. His pretty girl, straight off a Nuka billboard. His frightened girl, shivering here in his Statehouse. She’s cleverer than him by a mile, hard to pin down. Trouble. A whole lot of trouble. The kind he’s been chasing his entire life. “Of course, doll. Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3\. I hope all of you are hanging in during these absolutely fucking wild times.


	9. Chapter 9

Hancock can tell something is different the moment they arrive at the base of the hill, glass dome just peeking over the top. Even the air feels different. Denser. Humid. June seems to feel it too, but while it’s putting him right on edge, something different’s happening with her. Her eyes glitter, the corners of her lips quirking upward. She checks her pipboy, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. Hancock narrows his eyes, scowling. Things have smoothed mostly over now that they’ve been back on the road, but every so often he’ll get these little reminders. Of what he doesn’t know.

_Greygarden._ He’s never heard of it and makes a note to get some of his people the hell on it, his skin itchy at the idea that he’s overlooked something this massive out in the wastes, especially with how close it is to the Weston Plant. All of this is making him feel pissed off and goddamn parched, but June’s suddenly unbridled enthusiasm is spurring them forward whether Hancock likes it or not.

She’s got a glint of recognition in her eyes as they hike up the steep cliff to the spot on the map, an almost palpable sense of anticipation. He can feel it, see it in the way her fingers clench and unclench into fists as she walks. They crest over the hill and June lets out a long, even breath. He glances over at her, wanting to ask what the fuck she finds so goddamn relaxing, but she’s already walking fast again, on a fucking mission. She stops just at the edge of the property, toeing the neat line of grass with her boot, like she half expects crossing that boundary will do something, will change something. “Well,” She startles at the sound of his voice, like she’s just remembered he’s there. He grins, sauntering over so he can whisper in her ear. “You just gonna stand there looking pretty sunshine or are we gonna go in?” She turns to look at him, just out of the corner of her eyes. She’s got that sweet little half smirk she gives him sometimes, the one that makes him think, for just a second, that she’s gonna burn the whole place down. But then she just shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, and heads on into the place, rifle strapped lazily to her back. She isn’t expecting a fight.

They do this sometimes: she, playacting the naïve, barely armed sweet little thing; he, swooping in with the firepower. But it doesn’t seem like that’s how it’s going to go down today. June reaches up and pulls her hair from the bun she’s had it up in for days. It falls in soft waves down her back and Hancock fights the impulse to yank it back. The sun catches her shape as it sets, casting her in muted darkness, outlined in gold. Dangerous thing, to be this poetic about a woman, even after everything.

It crosses his mind as they wind through the rows of trees, the scent of mutfruit heavy and sugared in the air, that he should go back to Goodneighbor. He’s been gone again for a couple months. Headed out with June the morning after they made up, following like a lost dog, no questions asked. Fahrenheit had about blown a gasket, pulling him aside, hissing to him about what Goodneighbor needs, what it doesn’t. He’d brushed her off but now, standing out at the far northern edge of the Commonwealth, he wonders if she’d been right. Maybe he should head back. Leave June with Nicky or Piper or whoever the hell else she pals around with out here and get Fahrenheit to set his head back on straight, warm his ass in that big lonely throne for a while. Throw his weight around again. June glances back at him, like she can hear his thoughts. She has pretty teeth, he thinks vaguely, has possibly the prettiest smile he’s seen in his whole goddamn life. She winks at him, disappearing behind the thick foliage of one of the trees. Goodneighbor evaporates like morning mist.

June may be immediately at ease in Greygarden, but Hancock can barely stand it. The glass on the greenhouse is so clean, the trees in such orderly lines. Hancock’s immediately on edge. His fingers seek his belt, thumb running over the hilt of his knife when the white robot bobs toward them. She drawls a hello in a mean, honeyed voice he ain’t ever heard on a mister handy before and June settles into what seems to be a real conversation. Hancock gives the place a quick over, his fingers never leaving the hilt of his knife.

June’s asking a lot of questions. More than usual. She seems younger suddenly, effervescent. Almost bubbly. If robots could preen, the white one would, clearly flattered by all this attention. And whatever she’s doing, she’s unlocked something in June. June tells her that she was in cryo, just offers it up, tell the robot that she was alive before the war, that she was living in New York and Hancock can barely contain his shock. June doesn’t tell people that, not really. She’s quick on her feet with lies, picking her origin story based on whatever poor sap she’s got in front of her. It’s a neat trick. One that Piper suggested, one that Hancock helps her fill out. Most often she tells people she’s a vault dweller. Gives her a little air of naivete that she can use, but isn’t all that noteworthy, doesn’t make people scrutinize her for too long. When she needs to seem a little more worldly, she’ll tell people she’s from Diamond City. Once, for the hell of it, she told a trader she was from the Capital Wasteland, nicking a few details from one of MacCready’s stories. So to be here, out in the middle of nowhere, telling some banged up maid bot her life story, is bizarre to say the goddamn least. Or maybe Hancock’s just jealous. He shoots her a look that she easily ignores.

They spend the night on the floor of the greenhouse, its thin glass groaning eerily in the wind. It’s a tactical nightmare. Lit up like a damn lantern on the top of a goddamn hill, most of the building open and exposed. Nowhere but trees for cover. Hancock imagines that even June would shatter the glass if she tried to climb up to get the shooting advantage she needs to be worth a damn in a fight. He wanted to sleep in the mostly intact homestead just down the hill, but June made such an incredible fuss about it that he folded. Because even she couldn’t break the lock to the basement’s door and that spooked her so bad she’d fled from the house like a skittish little animal, leaving Hancock alone among the shattered furniture and grime. He doesn’t tend to argue when she gets a look in her eye like that. Hancock shifts onto his back, trying to get comfortable. The greenhouse isn’t _that_ bad. The floor’s hard as hell but there’s this kind of nice, ambient light reflecting across the glass and the quiet whir of the robots floating above them soothes some deep part of him. Hancock glances over beside him.

June out like a light. Out harder than maybe he’s ever seen her. And looks more peaceful than he thought possible. They’ve been fucking some. Here and there. Afterwards she’s always boneless, especially if he’s roughed her around some, but he realizes now that there’s an extra inch of fear he ain’t be able to get out, just a little knot of terror left inside her. Being here has smoothed it out. That sits heavy in his gut. He scolds himself. _Shit, John, don’t be a fool. Jealous of a greenhouse and a few buckets of bolts? Really?_

June rolls to face him, fast asleep, hair a golden tangle around her face. He watches her chest rise and fall and wonders what John McDonough would have done with a girl like this, if he would have been more or less deserving than John Hancock is.. It’s more introspection than he’s used to, but he tries it on. Follows the train of thought just to see where it takes him, like a high he’s never felt before, just testing it out.

One of the robots whirs past and the light refracting off its round, metallic body casts dark shadows over her face. She looks young when she sleeps but worn out too. Tired as all hell and there’s something about it that pisses Hancock the hell off. At himself mostly. Like he’s been doing a slack job, like he’s been failing. But these thoughts ain’t comfortable and he doesn’t linger long. He kneads the spots beside where his nose should be, begging sleep to come pay him a visit. His pack’s across the room and he imagines that if he gets up to slip some medex out, the robots will swarm him like bees. At the very least it’ll wake June and she _needs_ whatever deep, dreamless sleep this place has gifted her.

June sighs in her sleep and Hancock rolls back over to face her. He reaches out to touch her, but stops midway, hand suspended just inches from her face. It suddenly feels to intimate to touch her like that. He’s been all over her damn body. Tongue and teeth and fingers and cock. Every inch of her. He’s spit in her mouth, run his tongue from her clit up between her ass cheeks. He has fucked every damn hole she’s got. But this? Her quietly asleep? He isn’t sure he really deserves that. Like maybe it isn’t for him. Hancock rolls over until his back’s to her, facing out into the night.

In the morning, when the sky is still that pale blue before the sun rises, they eat breakfast on a bluff overlooking the ruined highway overpass just across the river. “I saw something about this place” June says between bites, “on tv. Before the war, I mean.”

“This place existed before the war?” She nods. Well, shit. Hancock gets it now, gets why this place got her all doe eyed and soft. Hell, he imagines that anything that looks even remotely like it did before the bombs fell probably comforts her, just a little.

“For a couple of weeks, at least. If I remember the news right, it had barely opened when the bombs fell. Got nuked to shit like the rest of us. Mad scientist and all.”

The white robot mentioned something about that. Their creator. Hancock had mostly tuned most of it out, but he puts the pieces into place now. He lights a cigarette and leans back, watching as a few raiders pack up their camp way across the river. “That why you didn’t want to sleep in the house?”

She frowns, reaching blindly for his cigarette. He relinquishes it, watches her take a long drag. “He’s probably down there right?”

Hancock shrugs. “Probably. Either feral or a corpse.”

“Or he isn’t feral.” She passes the cigarette back, looking hard at him. “Maybe he’s just a normal ghoul and he’s been trapped down there,” her voice goes quiet, just barely a whisper, “for centuries.”

“Not likely.”

She huffs. “I found someone like that, you know. A little kid. Trapped in a refrigerator of all things. For, like, two hundred years. Two. Hundred. Years. Can you believe that?”

“Yeah, Nicky told me about that.”

“Does Valentine tell you everything?”

“Just about.”

She rolls her eyes, then shakes her head, looking out past the river. “I can’t imagine anything worse than that.”

“Talking to Valentine?”

She snorts, nudging him playfully. Hancock beams, but she’s grim again before the smile can even leave his ruined lips. Lost in thought. His serious, serious girl. “Trapped like that. Can you imagine?” He can’t and doesn’t really want to, but June ain’t deterred. “All alone in the dark. You don’t have a clue what’s happening. Can’t figure out why you haven’t died yet.”

_That_ throws him for a little bit of a loop. There’s something about the way she says it, something about _what_ she’s saying. He mulls it over. It makes him feel a little cold thinking like that. Hancock looks at her from the corner of his eye. “You feel that way when they had you on ice?”

She jolts, looking wide-eyed at him. “What? Oh god, no. I don’t remember a thing.” She frowns again. “Or, I mean, I don’t remember a lot.”

Hancock sits up, resting an arm on his bent knee. “What do ya remember?” June brushes him off with a shrug, pours her attention into her breakfast. He’s got half a mind to press, but it’s a nice morning and, besides, some of what she said is really sticking on his brain. A faint, fucked little memory of his own. He’d gone blind after the dose that made him go ghoul. For two weeks, Fahrenheit told him, but time had become so slow and fractured that he couldn’t even being to guess how long he’d laid in that bed. It had become the beginning and end of his world. He’d fumble down his own body, each day the topography changing under his fingertips. He couldn’t track the pain on his body. Without sight it radiated up every inch of his skin. He’d cried like a baby, howled like an animal. And each moment that passed where the pain cleared enough for his thoughts to return, he wondered, sometimes aloud, why he hadn’t died yet. He looks at June, really looks at her, and wonders what her moment was. Was it the moment the cold crept in, as she pounded the glass, scientists jeering at her from the other side, he scent of ash still lingering on her clothes. Was it when she pried herself out of cryo, alone, the vault thick with rot. Or something else that she hadn’t told him about. Something worse.

“Hancock?” He nearly jumps out of his skin, hand going instinctually for the knife at his belt. But it ain’t nothing. Just June. And she’s watching him real close, perched like a little bird on the bluff, knees pulled tight to her chest. “You’re scaring me.”

Hancock bares his teeth, slipping easily away from his own dark memories. “Maybe I’m about to go feral.”

June’s eyes go dark, simmering under her lashes. She frowns even deeper. “Stop it.”

“Hell June, I’m just kidding around.”

June bristles. He can almost feel the electricity of her dark energy wafting off her. “Well, it’s not funny. It’s not funny okay.”

He softens his voice. “June.” He reaches toward her, but she shimmies out of his grip. She’s a livewire and he’s losing patience, already on edge. “What’s got you pulled so tight, huh?”

“Everything.”

She’s on her feet, skittish as a bird, but he’s quicker, pulling her hard toward him. She yelps and the sound snaps him out of it. _Shit. What the hell had gotten into him to be rough like that with her?_ He softens his grip. “Shit, June I’m sorry.” He lets go and she retracts her arm like he’d burned her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rough.”

“It’s fine.”

“Don’t got to be.”

She looks hard at him, hands crossed over her chest. The air between them has sharpened and he feels suddenly dangerous. Like he’s capable of anything. He remembers that day in Goodneighbor, when she’d come worn out and shivering from blasting a hole through his strongroom. The day sits on a razors edge. He could have killed her, could have hurt her real bad. He’d done worse for less. He remembers the hooded look in her eyes when she hissed up at him all those months later. _I know what kind of man you are._ The thought startles him, but June doesn’t seem to notice, seems settled a little. “What’s got _you_ pulled so tight, huh?” He takes the olive branch she offers, feeling a little more like himself. The dark thoughts that had started simmering dissipate now and he reaches in his pack for a jet, wanting to slow things down.

“You, mostly.” June snorts, then smiles up at him. The rising sun’s at her back and Hancock feels almost transformed. Like a bolt of light between the John McDonough who fled Diamond City in the night, terrified and strung out, and the Hancock who stood bloodied on the porch of the State House. He wonders if June’s got that feeling, straddling two selves, two worlds. Probably. Their darkness meets silently between them. Unspoken. “Where are we off to, huh?” June shrugs, glancing mischievously back at him. He falls in step with her, shoulder to shoulder. His devotion is frightening. It’s the best drug he’s ever done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	10. Chapter 10*

They’d come up from the foundations of the houses. Parts of them flattened, parts torn. Their bodies make slick sounds, bones crackling when they catch their wayward limbs on broken windowpanes, on the shattered remains of doors. Hancock runs his fingers along his own skin as they approach. His fingertips find the grooves on his arms, knots like old wood. There are places on his body where the skin is so thin and translucent that he can see the meat of his muscle.

They’re almost the same, he thinks. He and these monsters. Brothers. Cousins, maybe. Becoming a ghoul dulled some of his sensation. It made pain less important, less real. But it heightened sensation too, the radiation exposing his raw nerves. Sometimes he can feel the air still around him, feel the sound of people’s voices.

So as he watches the ferals pull up from their dark hiding places, leaving pieces of themselves in trails behind them, he wonders what it would feel like to be that numb. Or maybe it isn’t numbness. Maybe the pain runs livid through them, but their brains are so heavy with radiation that the sensation has no destinations, devoid now of meaning. Hancock isn’t sure which is worse. The psycho he shot when he first heard their rumbling is wearing off and as he comes hard down to earth, ferals thrashing around him, he realizes that he’s lost sight of June. Panic grips him so tightly that he stumbles. A feral regains its footing at his misstep and swings its heavy, twisted arm toward him. June’s pooch makes quick work of it, springing from the fray, teeth sinking hard into its neck. Hancock wipes its blood from his face with its palm. It’s a livid red, vital and warm. It smells acrid, almost electrical. Inhuman. Hancock shudders. His own blood is suddenly hot under his skin. In the periphery, June screams and it reminds him what the fuck he’s supposed to be doing out here.

June never does well with ferals. Something about the way they move, he guesses. She told him once that she was sure they could smell her. That no matter how quiet she moved, no matter how completely she stuck to the shadows, they always got the jump on her. Hancock’s inclined to agree, though he aint sure if ferals can smell much of anything. He’s seen her shimmy just inches past super mutants, none of them the wiser. She’s light on her feet, quiet as a whisper, but the ferals always seek her out. Maybe they can smell her fear. He almost can.

From the corner of his eye, Hancock sees her wrestle away from one. She skitters off into the shadows. She’s more comfortable there, he knows that now. Prefers to be unseen. Or, at least, overlooked. The universe really screwed the pooch when it made a girl as sly and wily as June that goddamn pretty. Head turner even in the middle of a fight. 

The rest of the ferals go down quick. Hancock wipes the gore off his knife, trying not to worry too hard about the blood. That thought still stuck between his temples. When he’s sure they’re down for good, he goes seeking out his girl. To his relief, she’s all in one piece, tucked behind an old, overturned car. Uninjured far as he can tell, but she’s rattled in the kind of quiet way he doesn’t really see all that often. The sort where her eyes get big and doe-like, where she’s got the inside of one cheek caught between her teeth. Funny, really, that he’s got a catalogue of this broad’s fears. No, not _this broad._ Christ, he’s been slipping back into his old bullshit real easy these days. Like he can’t play good boy for too long without fraying at the edges. He’s cracking a little under the strain of it is, relieved when he finds a few hits of jet still in is pack. “You alright, sweet thing?” June scowls, but falls in step beside him as they walk, sticking so close he can smell the sweet scent of her hair. He has half a mind to thread his fingers through it and yank her over, kiss her until she can’t breathe, but her eyes are darting back and forth, hands clasped nervously at her chest. Most people don’t get to see this side of her. Hell, he usually doesn’t see this side of her. It’s beyond fear, he can feel that, something closer to dread. A slow simmer. Like in Sanctuary. That night when he’d watched her back until morning, a string of bulbs blinking brightly above them.

He’s been thinking about Sanctuary lately, been thinking about the world that June knew. Each billboard they pass on the road; every magazine they find, pages brittle and torn, he wonders what it means to her, what it reminds her of. Besides, shit has been different. He can feel that easy. She’s been drifting off more when they talk, when they fuck. Sleeping less, eating like she did when they first met. That vault suit ain’t fitting so snug anymore. So when they find a rickety, little guard tower with a couple sleeping bags on its dusty floor, he decides he’s gonna try to talk this one out. A real diplomat and all that.

“Can I ask you something?” He asks, sitting with his back against one of the plywood walls.

June pauses. She’s been looting around the room, long fingers searching out the junk she likes so much. Pages from magazines and little ceramic figurines. Pretty things, delicate things. Sometimes when he thinks about it, it feels like his heart’s getting real big. Tender, that’s how he feels. But it, apparently, is not how he sounds. June eyes him carefully. “Do I have a choice?”

“You always got a choice, sunshine.”

One side of her mouth ticks upward, just a little. “But you’re gonna ask me anyway, aren’t you?”

Hancock grins. “Sure am.” June rolls her eyes. “You’re not spooked by much.”

June’s laugh is honeyed. But quiet. She glances back toward the darkness beyond the tower. She looks out for a long time, then sits across from where he’s sitting, knees pulled up to her chest. “Debatable.”

Hancock chuckles. “Alright, that’s fair. How’s this: some things freak you extra. Really work their way under their skin.”

"Oh yeah?" Her nose twitches and he knows he's heading somewhere she doesn't really want to go. But she knows so much about him. So many nights too high and too liquored up he'd told her everything. Just about. Told her about the way looking up at the glittering stands from the roof of his family's shack by the wall filed him with the most hopeless longing. About that moment, like a knife clean between his ribs, when he'd stopped recognizing his own brother. That junkie terror those first months in Goodneighbor. The blood on his hands. The guilt that stared him so hard in the face every morning. The rush of vertigo that first time on the balcony of the State House. She's listened to it all and almost never returned the favor, but he knows the shit she's got trailing behind her is just as dark. He can tell by the way she takes his confessions, that tacit understanding, and he doesn't know if trying to yank the past out of her is an act of mercy or an act of violence. Hancock figures it might be both.

"Don't be evasive it’s unattractive ," She huffs, toeing the line between playful and pissed off. If he had any mentats left, he'd probably try to play this smarter. But he's clean out and so he falls back into old habits. He bludgeons his way through. "I wanna know why." 

"Why what?" 

"I wanna know you don't flinch at a super mutant nest, but the wrong kind of lighting can make you all skittish"

She frowns. "If you're going to ask me something John, just do it." _John._ His name. She’s been doing that lately too and he still ain’t sure what to do with it.

"I want to know about Sanctuary."

She pauses and, if he didn't know her so well, he might have missed the careful way she tries to school her face. "Why? Goodneighbor getting into the expansion game?" 

"No offense, sweetheart, but I don't give a shit about your shithole settlement out on the ass end of nowhere." 

"Hey now." 

He grins. "I said no offense." June shifts where she's sitting cross-legged on the old wood floor, weighing her knees down with her palms. He still hasn't had time to read up on the kind of dance she said she did back in New York City, but damn if it didn't make her flexible as all hell and damn if he hadn't been having all kinds of fun with that. Moving her into crazy positions, spreading those legs real wide. He wishes his cock would let him be serious for one goddamn minute around June. _Hell_. 

"Guess I don't know what you mean then." 

Hancock lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. The glowing tip flickers in his black eyes. "You know exactly what I mean. I want to know about _you._ Before everything got nuked to shit." 

She bristles. "I've told you. You know where I'm from. I've told you all about my sister, I-" 

"You know goddamn well that's now what I want. Give me a little credit." June flinches and he realizes he's been using his mayoral voice. The one he'd use for the drifters who are way over their heads in debt, the one he might use right before he slips a knife between a set of ribs. Hancock walks it back. "I just want to know how you ended up here." 

She glares at him. "Why?" 

"Hell, June. I know I ain't the most lovey dovey, but I think we got something going between us, don't you? I just want to get to know you better." 

June's holding herself like it's a real cold night even though the day's heat is still thick in the air. "I'm not sure there's much to know. Besides, anything worth talking about is a long story." 

Hancock reclines a little. He wants to look casual, relaxed, but Fahrenheit told him he's the most menacing when he's like that. He hopes June knows better by now. "Do I look like I got some place to be?" She seems to consider it. The light from the lantern is casting wide shadows over her face. June shivers, like she's just sensed something unpleasant, and glances behind her into the darkness. "Why are you so touchy about this?" 

She looks back at him hesitantly. "It was just freaky, I don't know." She shrugs. "The last couple of years before the bombs were...kind of heavy." 

"Can't be heavier than the shit show you woke up in." 

June sighs. "I'm not sure you'd understand." 

Hancock leans back, rolling the sharp edge of his knife over each knuckle. June watches as the light from the lantern gleams on the blade. "Why don't you try me?"

"It was hard." June doesn't say what was hard and so Hancock assumes that it's everything and it pricks his heart. He gets that, when everything ain't going even close to plan. 

"Harder than here?" 

She rocks her head back and forth, not a yes, not a no. "In some ways, yeah. Sometimes it's easier here. I don't know." She glances to the left, where the ruins of Boston loom in the distance. Gun smoke rises from the rooftops, the bright popping of incendiaries off over the bridge. "I just need things to be...a little unsettled. I don't know why." 

He can see that, remembers the sort of manic hedonism that sometimes passes over her like a wave. The kind that makes them get along so well. "Even before the war?" 

"Yeah, definitely." She tucks her knees up under her chin again, makes herself real small. "Sanctuary Hills was just...not my kinda place. I didn't fit in, I didn't know the rules. I mean, I was only there for a few months and I'd already...I don't know. I wasn't exactly popular in the neighborhood." 

"That it?" Hancock grunts as he sits a little straighter. Man, he has been missing his bed in the State House something fierce these days. They've been striking out, sleeping hard on floors or threadbare sleeping bags for days and both of them seem a little stiff. June especially. Christ, he'd like to have her back in Goodneighbor. Like to have her naked and spread out on his sheets. He could soothe all that tension right out of her. _Goddamn,_ he could really work her. She bristles again and his thoughts come slamming back to the matter at hand. She's watching him like a damn hawk, waiting for him to fucking say something. He clears his throat. "Not fitting in hardly seems like it'd be the end of your world, sunshine. Doesn't seem like it warrants the kind of spooked you get whenever we're within spitting distance of that damn settlement." 

"I mean my sister didn't really fit in either. I don't know." She reaches roughly for his cigarette. He relinquishes it, knowing better than to get in her way when a mood like this is brewing. "And it's not like I showed up in the best shape, Christ. It's complicated, okay? It's all really complicated." 

"Alright, I get it, I get it." 

She looks at him sourly. "You don't." 

"You're right. I don't. So why don't you tell me?"

"I don't know what you want me to say." 

Hancock rifles in his pack for some of the jerky he lifted from the last raider camp they cleared and tosses one her way. She ignores it. He'd usually make that more of a thing, but tonight he's trying to ease his way in. He changes his approach. "So what did you do there? Take care of the kid?" 

June snorts and passes the cigarette back. Hancock told her once that she could just have her own, didn't need to keep taking drags off his. She'd just shrugged him off. It'd pissed him off at first, but now he likes having the taste of her in his mouth. Especially likes it when she does it in front of other people. Lets 'em know exactly where he stands with her. "Do you think I'd be any good with kids? Come on." Hancock smiles. He doesn't imagine she has the patience for that. "Besides, that's what Nora got Codsworth for." 

"So what? You spend your days twiddling your thumbs?" Just the ghost of a smile appears on her lips and Hancock knows he's got his foot in the door. "Tell me, sweet thing, what kind of trouble you get up to?" 

"God, hardly any." She leans back on her hands, staring up at the sky now speckled with stars. She'd asked him once, half asleep on some bare mattress they'd found, what he thought was out there, up in the stars. He'd confessed that he'd never thought about it and she'd been stunned, telling him about all the things she thought might be there, the things she hoped might be there. She'd looked so young when she told him that. Vulnerable and open and raw and all right there, just in front of him. He'd never felt tender like that. When he looks at her now, still gazing up at those stars, that tenderness roars back to life. It scares him now, this feeling. The intensity of it. She has his whole heart between her fingers and she doesn't even know it. He barely does. "Or at least by today's standards, Christ"

Hancock jolts back to reality, the memory slipping quickly away. He fumbles in his pack. "You mind if I, uh," he lifts his last inhaler of jet and waggles it between his fingers. 

June shrugs. "Course not."

"Atta girl." The first hit goes down a little rough. His voice is raspier when he speaks next. "And what were yesterday's standards then?"

"My _existence_ was trouble in 2077."

He winks. "It's trouble now." She smiles and averts her eyes, blushing a little. Goddamn he loves it when he can get her to blush. "So come on, paint me a picture, huh? What did you do all day?" 

"Watched t.v. mostly. Hours and hours of it. Pretty much all day long." She rolls her neck, wincing as it pops. Hancock slides over next to her, working his strong fingers through the tight muscles at the base of her shoulders. She sighs, letting her head roll a little back. _This_ is what he likes to see, her all soft and sweet like this. He has half a mind to stop this little line of questioning and put his fingers to better use, but June's got to talking and he sure as shit ain't gonna stop her. Not with how much prying it took him to get this far. "I bet you I could hum the jingle for every single shitty commercial that aired in 2077. Really. I watched every dumb daytime soap nearly start to finish."

"Sounds like a trip." He has some idea what she's talking about, but not enough to really picture it. "Sounds boring too. I always wanted to watch tv. Read about it in a couple magazines back in Diamond City. Just not sure if I could do it sober." 

"Who said I was sober?" 

"Yeah? You boozin' all day long too?" 

"Ha! Absolutely not. Hardly a drop of liquor in that house." 

"Your sister not a big drinker?" 

"Not after Nate, no. Before he..." she flinches, "you know, he drank all the fucking time. When I first met him, he was the kind of guy who'd leave his beer half finished, but, man, after the war..." she shakes her head, "it was something else. First thing we had to do when I showed up was empty out all his liquor. We piled all the bottles out on the sidewalk by the trash." She glances over at him. "You had to do that back then. Separate the recycling out from the - oh it doesn't matter. Anyway, the whole neighborhood stood out and gawked. I was wearing an old leotards and some old, worn out shorts. Not the kind of thing I'd ever usually wear outside, but then again it was a quiet afternoon. I wasn't expecting anyone to be out." She sighs. "So, yeah, that was my introduction to the neighborhood. Nora's unmarried sister from New York. Wearing next to nothing, hauling a pile of empty wine bottles onto the curb. And hell, I was in a bad state too. Must have looked like a wreck. I was barely pulling myself together as it was, you know?" Hancock nods even though he's not really following. She frowns. "I had this crazy idea - had it for months, really - that there were still bits of him in the grass. Nate, I mean. Just absolutely convinced that I'd find some sliver of bone or clump of bloody hair. Something the paramedics missed." She shivers. "Awful." 

"Awful," Hancock agrees, still trying to parse out what some of the words she's using mean. Her tone ain't betraying anything either. He can't tell if this is the kind of thing he should make a joke about or not. Sometimes she likes that, when he pretends nothing bothers him. But he doesn't have time to decide before she's talking again. He's opened the goddamn flood gates today and something in the air, something about the way she seems electrified as she talks, is giving him the willies. 

"No, I mostly just smoked weed. Uppers if I could get my hands on them, but pills were hard to find in the suburbs. Weed was easier to get a hold of. Besides," she smiles a little shyly up at him, "I liked the way it made me feel." 

"And how's that?" Hancock always feels a little cheated when June talks about drugs before the bombs. Like there was a whole smorgasbord that he ain't ever gonna get the chance to try. 

“It would make you feel...I don't know. I'm not sure I can describe it." She stops, thinking, teeth working her lower lips. "Soft," she decides, looking up at him again, "It makes you feel soft."

"Sounds nice." 

"I used to read these books. In the afternoons when the stations started replaying the morning's shows, before they'd start playing prime time in the evening." She has a far away smile. "You could get them in the checkout line at the grocery store. I did all the shopping for Nora. She couldn't stand grocery stores. Never could figure out why." She glances over at Hancock, to make sure he's still listening. He sure as hell is. It would take another goddamn bomb to pull his attention away now. She ain't never talked this much about her family, about her life before. "She was easily overstimulated. Needed things to be just so. Visited me once in New York and could barely stand it. The opposite of me really. I like to be overwhelmed."

"Oh, don't I know it." He winks. 

She rolls her eyes. "Anyway, I like grocery stores. Or liked, I guess. I'd take my bike down on sunny days and I'd buy one of these books with the groceries. Then I'd head home and sit out on the porch and read them until Nora came home from work." Hancock's trying to keep up. He wonders suddenly if she doesn't talk about all of it, because she's afraid she won't be understood, that all her references will be lost on him. He doesn't want that, works hard to seem like he's getting every word. "These books were total trash. Bodice rippers." She grins. "Just total smut." 

"Smut, huh?"

"Oh yeah, pretty much just pornography, really. Like bend you over the table shit." Hancock chuckles, lighting another cigarette. It's a nice little thought: June horny and wet one some pre-war front porch, rubbing her thighs together to get a little friction. Oh yeah, Hancock could definitely get some mileage with that little fantasy. Maybe she's feeling that way too, because she scoots a little closer, plays with the collar of his shirt with those long fingers of hers. “They were terrible. Just awful. Written like trash, but there was something about them, you know? They always had the same plot. Some dashing, powerful man coming to the rescue. All suave and heroic. And then he's a fucking rocket in the sack. That's the whole thing. Some contrived rescue and then two hundred pages of fucking." 

Hancock growls a little in the base of his throat. "You looking to get rescued, sweetheart." 

She demurs, eyes simmering. Her voice barely above a whisper ."I might be." 

Hancock crawls over her body, pressing a kiss to the side of her mouth. "Well, I am _happy_ to oblige." Hancock leans back to slough off his overcoat, but when he does, he catches something in her eyes that stops him. "You all good, sunshine?" 

"Yeah, yeah sure," but she's looking off center, mouth pulled just slightly down. "Sometimes they freaked me out." 

Hancock swallows hard. He moves a little away from her, giving her room. "What did?" 

“The books. Sometimes they would get me all hot and bothered, but sometimes..." 

"What? Sometimes what?" The lantern is flickering, light dimmer now. June looks smaller than she should, thinner than he remembers. How could he let this happen? _When_ did this happen? They hadn't been apart for that long this last time. Just a few weeks. Had he really not been paying attention? No, he hadn't. He'd been pouring all his energy into Goodneighbor, into chems. Busting heads and shooting up and, shit, did she look this tired the last time he saw her? 

"I don't know. I didn't want to feel that stuff anymore. Reading about it was fine, but sometimes I'd be out on the porch and one of the husbands from across the street would come over and-" 

"And what?" Hancock's voice has dropped a few octaves. He's baring his teeth without even thinking. 

She looks at him, a little startled. "Oh, nothing. None of _them_ ever touched me." 

If he had hairs on his neck anymore, they'd be standing straight at attention. "So what? So what would happen?" 

"I'd just get nervous. The way they looked at me sometimes..." She frowns. "I decided on the plane ride to Boston that I'd never let a man touch me again." 

Hancock scowls. The way she said that's chilled him, but he tries to keep his voice even. "Don't seem to be keeping your word." 

June chuckles softly. "You were awfully convincing." 

Hancock leans back, lights another cigarette to buy him time. He wishes he hadn't taken that jet. It's making him feel foggy and unsteady. "So what the hell would make you decide something like that anyway." 

She shrugs again. "Nothing really." 

"Doesn't sound like nothing. Sounds like a whole lot of something to me." 

She smiles, but it's canned, doesn't reach her eyes. Hancock finds it a little eerie. "I wish you'd been there." She softens a little when she says it, like she's just confessed something she's been holding onto for a long time. 

Hancock brushes her hair off her shoulders, arranges her in front of him. "Yeah? Why's that?" 

"I don't know. If I'd known a man like you in New York..." 

"What?" 

Her smile is a little sad. "I could have used a man like you in New York." 

"Well you got me now." 

"True." She rests her head on his shoulder, letting her hands rest lightly on his thighs. "Besides, I don't know if you would have liked it before the war." 

"No?

"Not sure. It was different." She peers up at him, still nuzzled into the crook of his neck. "'Do you ever imagine yourself back there?" 

He used to, sometimes. Mostly when he was younger. It's trickier for him to try and imagine himself there now, especially with the real deal right in front of him. He'd probably say something naive. "Sure, why not?" He wraps his arms around her and inhales. She smells sugary, warm. His eyes flutter closed. He lets his imagination wipe the radiation from the landscape, fills it in with those big, full trees he saw in her memory. He can see her perched on a porch railing, long legs dangling in the breeze. He puts her in some slip of a dress, watches as it falls down her shoulders while she pages through a paperback. It's harder to imagine himself. He used to have red hair. A trickster color, his mother used to say. His freckles made him look boyish, mischievous. Eyes as green as the wall, his father told him. He'd been handsome. Everyone thought so. Handsome and wily, nothing like his stout, boorish brother. Maybe the resentment had started even then. Hancock imagines the pre-war world might find him handsome too. 

One of the girls he used to tour around with in Diamond City called him a hound dog. Would he have been one before the end of the world too? Nature or nurture or nuclear fallout, who's to say. Hancock tries to imagine himself in Sanctuary Hills but can't. June probably felt the same way when she showed up there. He doesn't imagine he would have managed to behave even before the bombs, probably would have been a scoundrel pre-war too, though he ain't sure what that would look like. Maybe he would have ended up in New York. Maybe he would have met June there. Hancock shifts on his knees a little, stroking June's back. "How'd they go about courting pre-war huh?" 

June snorts. "Courting? That what you think you did to me?" He smiles a sly smile, all teeth. Her eyes flash and he knows he looks like a predator, like the kind of dangerous she likes. "They would have put you in jail before the war." 

"Oh yeah? And what do you know about any of that?" 

"More than you think." 

"Oh yeah, I bet you do." He takes her by the jaw, pushing her back so he can get a good look at her. "You're right at home in Goodneighbor. I know you ain't as sweet as you look." He kisses along her jaw. "You got a taste for bad men." 

Her fingers skim his cheek, her voice soft. "You're not a bad man." 

Hancock takes her hand and kisses each finger. "I am, sunshine, I really am." 

"Not to me." 

He holds her hand against his ruined lips and breaths hot through her fingers. "Never to you." 

She's pulsing around nothing, her orgasm still rolling over her, sprawled out on her back like the prettiest damn thing he's seen in his whole life. Hancock's cum drips debauched from her pussy onto the floor. He watches her, softening cock in one hand, the other trailing up her thigh. "Goddamn you look so good and fucked." He slips two fingers inside of her and June gasps, twitching away from his hand. "That's a good girl. All nice and sensitive." His fingers are drenched with the both of them when he slides them out. "Fucking Christ, look at this mess." He taps them on her waiting lips. "Clean it up." She laves his fingers with her lips, lavishing attention on each knuckle. It's a study in devotion and he's hot for it. Hancock presses the thumb of his other hand onto her clit and she goes rigid with anticipation. "Ah yeah, you’re ready to cum again” She looks helplessly up at him, body still trembling. "So hot and wet for me." Her eyes roll back, lashes fluttering, like just the idea is doing it for her. He leans down to take her clit in his mouth, but something stops him, leaves him hovering just over her. He suddenly wants to ask about the plane to Boston. It's stupid as hell, really, for him to be thinking like this while she's spread out like a goddamn meal for him, but he can't get it out of his mind. 

"John." She squirms under his grip. "John, god, please." He runs his thumb in soft circles over her clit and looks up the expanse of her body. She's so beautiful and soft. Taut and nimble and pretty. She's too good. Too good for him. Too good for whatever the fuck happened in New York. She shudders when he finally kisses between her legs. _I'm sorry_ , he wants to say, _I'm sorry that this is your lot in life. I'm sorry that you ended up with a scoundrel like me._ June trails her nimble fingers down until she reaches his scalp. She digs her nails in, rolls her hips against his mouth. "Oh god, John. I love this, fuck, I love this." It sounds almost like I love _you_ and he lets the guilt bleed out of him. Lets her skin and pussy and fingernails be the only thing in his world. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	11. Chapter 11*

“You look good like that.” June turns back to look at him, hair falling in waves down her back. She’s breathing hard; jaw so tight he’s sure her teeth must be aching. The dregs of the psycho they took still wafting off her. She twitches, fidgets. Psycho’s like that sometimes. Really rolls through you. That’s why he tied her up.

Hancock’s keyed up too. A sort of base tension between them, some unspoken thing he can’t quite get under. He’s been drowning it in chems. Her too. More than usual. But June’s wet. Painfully, obviously wet. Slick all down those pretty little thighs. He tells himself it’s a waste of time to be worrying. “We’ll have to do this kind of thing more often, huh? Parade you around town. Show everyone exactly who you belong to.” She shivers again, breath a little ragged, a little shallow. She’s on her knees, thighs tied together, hadn’t bother to fuss with her boots so that vault suit of hers bunched around her ankles. Hancock tied her arms too, right at the elbow, and she’s leaning heavily on them now, ass high up in the air. Hancock crouches to test the tightness of the rope and, when he’s satisfied it ain’t cutting off anything vital, he nudges her with the heavy tip of his boot. Just hard enough to send her rocking, hard enough to hurt. June balls her hands into tight fists, but when he leans down to kiss the spot where he’d kicked, she shudders with pleasure. June likes mean if he follows it with sweetness. He’s been learning that. Maybe a little reckless in doing it. They’ve both been a little reckless.

Hancock stands and stretches, working out a few kinks in his shoulders. A soft afternoon light is coming in through the few windows that haven’t been boarded up. Above them, that big ornate metal cage is creaking, hanging precariously from the tall, domed ceiling. A chandelier, June called it. Fancy stuff for fancy people. She’d explained the finer points of the library system as they’d dodged mutant grenades, backs pressed hard against the sandbags some poor, unlucky sap had tried to turn into cover. The library is quiet now. The creaking and June shifting impatiently on the floor are the only sounds. 

Hancock saunters over to the door to check how the lock’s holding. Well enough, he decides, though the damn door would splinter if anyone even put a half assed effort into getting it open. It occurs to him then that this is possibly his worst idea yet. They’ve just cleared the damn place of a whole nest of mutants. Their corpses still warm in the other room. They really should have cleared out, hightailed it back toward Goodneigbor but when they were scavving, Hancock’d found a couple skeins of rope in some closet and his whole brain lit up. He’d tossed them casually to June, a mischievous glint in his eye. She’d done that sweet little thing she does, taking her tongue between her teeth. He’d advanced on her like a damn predator after that.

It occurs to him too, as he stalks around her body, still shivering against the rope, that he’s really supposed to be the voice of reason here. That he’s the one who’s supposed to say they probably shouldn’t be fucking in a super mutant nest, probably shouldn’t be exposing themselves like this. She’s just as damn impulsive as he is, that’s the problem, just as much of a goddamn hedonist. A real match made in heaven. But she’s young, so young, and the Commonwealth is still so new to her. He figures he ain’t being a very good protector, tying her up in a place like this, letting his cock take the reins. He rolls his neck and, as he does, the light catches again on June’s pussy. She’s filthy wet all down her thighs. It is fucking _debauched_ and he reminds himself that being responsible ain’t really his speed and maybe June don’t need a protector. Maybe what she needs is an animal. He can oblige that.

She whines and Hancock grins. June’s impatient. That’s the first thing he learned about her, the thing he’s been learning over and over again. He nudges her with his boot. “I thought I told you to be quiet.” She scoffs and he grins again. They’ve been playing these games more and more. Started really when she asked him one night, full stars overhead just a stone’s throw from the Slog, to choke her until it hurt. June came so damn hard on his cock that night he was sure he’d died. Something’s shifted inside of her. He can feel it. A better man would trim his impulses. Hancock should know better. He doesn’t. “Maybe I should just leave you here, huh?” He watches the muscles in her bare back tighten. “If you’re gonna be such a goddamn brat, maybe I should just leave you here and let the super mutants sort you out.” Her shudder rolls from the top of her head to her feet and it makes Hancock want to see. His boots echo as he makes his way around her, bending at the hips to try and get a better look at her face. Her eyes are dark, all pupil, jaw a little slack. She’s looking at him like a young animal. Sweet and innocent and in so much goddamn danger. When he takes her jaw in his hand, she preens like a cat. Hancock drops her so quickly she has to scramble to stay upright.

His joints crack a little when he settles down on the hard marble floor in front of where she’s kneeling. They left Goodneighbor again about a month ago and have been riding hard ever since. Sleeping wherever they could find shelter, really roughing it. June doesn’t seem to have a destination, seems to be wandering all over the damn place, doing all kind of random ass shit. But Hancock is, as always, along for the ride. They’d scrounged up a halfway decent shower in the basement of Police Precinct 8, but June had been so rattled by what they’d found there for ole Nicky that she didn’t seem like she much enjoyed it. She’s still keyed up. 

There’s a part of Hancock, a softer part, a quieter part, that wishes they were in Goodneighbor, wishes that he could watch her soak in his bathtub, watch her eyes go all dreamy. But they ain’t. Haven’t been for a little while.

Hancock lights a cigarette and lets it burn awhile. Lets the smoke drift skyward. June’s watching it closely, eyes glued to its smoldering tip. He waves it dangerously in front of her. “How bad do you want to hurt, sweet thing?” Her eyes get wide, bottom lip twitching as she watches the glowing end sway back and forth. He can tell she’s trying to decide. He’s trying to decide too. Not sure if he wants to burn her like he used to with a couple raider chicks who’d blow into town every so often looking for kicks. It’s not like that with her. Deeper, though he doesn’t really know what that means. He’s got those big, scary protective urges that drew him to her in the first place But he’s tired too. Worn out. The Brotherhood has been encroaching closer and closer toward Goodneighbor territory. The raiders on the periphery acting more and more foolish. Reckless. He feels reckless too. The glowing tip burns down.

She decides for him. A spark flies from the end of the cigarette toward her. She skitters backward best she can with the rope, eyes darting. It’s too far. “Maybe another time, huh?” He ashes the cigarette after a few long drags, his mind running through possibilities. He never can tell with June. She surprises him with her tolerance for pain, with the way she sometimes chases it. But sometimes she’s paper thin. Sometimes even the smallest roughness is too much. Something inside of her, something she keeps from him, turns over fast and hard and violent and before he knows it. she’s drifting. Hancock needs to be careful. Especially in a place like this. Especially with the last dregs of a shot of psycho still coursing through her. That’s why he told her to be quiet, wanted to give her something to focus on, something for her brain to chew on for a while.

He stands, his footsteps echoing as he stalks around her. “You know what I’d like?” He settles on his knees behind her, pulls her ass cheeks apart so he can get a good look at all that sweetness. “I’d like you full up.” He runs his thumb over the tight bud of her ass. “Think I could find a bottle in this mess? Got be one around here right?” He shifts on his knees, trying to get a better angle and nip at the skin just beside her ass. She goes rigid beneath his palms. “Think this sweet ass could take something like that? A whole fucking bottle?” He can see that every muscle in her back is taut. He imagines there’s a scream bitten back behind her teeth and traces her ribs with his fingers, a taunt and an assurance all rolled into one. There’s a little more to her now. She’s not scrawny like she was and Hancock doesn’t know why but damn if that doesn’t please him. He fumbles one-handed with his pants, freeing his aching cock. She startles when he runs the head softly against her clit and he strokes her flank to settle her. _Just a game,_ he hopes the touch reminds her, _it’s all just a game, sunshine._ They haven’t laid out the rules. It makes the game headier. “You’d be damn full to bursting, wouldn’t ya? Just need to find something for that pretty mouth and you’d be stuffed.” She looks back almost pleading. Her pupils are enormous and Hancock can tell by the way she’s darting her eyes back and forth that she’s honest to god spooked by the way he’s talking. Or, at the very least, unsure if he’s all talk. She likes the be scared. Told him that once from across a campfire. She likes to toe that edge, peer over the side down at the abyss. An echo in her that he recognizes in himself. _Don’t let me fall,_ she’d said to him one night. They were on solid ground, hunkered down in the ruins of an old house. He’d taken that as a warning, and an invitation, and he ain’t about to lose his grip on her trust now. “No?” She bristles. “Fine.” He swats her so hard on the ass that she bites her lip to keep from crying out. “We’ll do it your way.” He wets his thumb in his mouth then sets it back on the tight bud of her ass. He counts to five, rubbing and rubbing, then presses slowly inside. She gasps. They haven’t done this before. Talked about it, yeah, but the real thing ain’t quite the same. June’s got the tightest ass he’s been inside and he has a brief flare of panic thinking that maybe he really is gonna hurt her, hurt her in a way she ain’t gonna forgive him for, she ain’t gonna want. But then she rocks back on his thumb. “Well, well. Look how sweet you are. Ain’t that a damn sight.” He twists his hand so he can slip two fingers inside her pussy. “Fucking insatiable.” She moans and he swats her ass again. “What did I say about keeping your mouth shut, huh?”

“I can’t take it, Hancock, I can’t take it.”

“Oh? She can’t take it, huh?” He glides his hand up her spine, taking her hair roughly in his fist. She arches toward him, crying out, until the smooth line of her neck is exposed to him. She yelps when he yanks again, fighting against the rope. “That doesn’t really sound like my problem, does it?” She falls silent, whole body trembling. Hancock can tell he’s toeing the edge of what she can take and he loosens his grip on her scalp, presses a soft kiss to her neck. “Do you think you can be a good girl for me, June?” She nods frantically. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Yes!” It comes out shrill.

“Well then,” he guides her back down onto her elbows, “maybe you don’t need to keep that mouth of yours shut after all.” 

“Fuck, thank you.” There’s something small in her voice, like a sigh, that makes Hancock stop in his tracks. He wants suddenly to flip her over, hold her right against his chest, whisper every sweet, soft thing he can think of. But she’s rutting back toward his cock, thighs shiny from arousal, and Hancock wants in an almost feral way to be in that part of her, wants to lick her up.

“Oh you are so welcome, sunshine.” She’s warm and wet as he pushes his cock inside. She sighs when he’s all the way in. Actually fucking sighs like his cock is the biggest relief in the whole world. He leans down, feeling tender, and kisses a path down her spine. “You _’re_ my sweet little thing, you know that?” She doesn’t say a word to that, just cries out, just pushes her body back so every part of her is touching every part of him. He snakes his hand up and takes a fistful of her hair. He can feel her heart pounding where his wrist meets the nape of her neck.

She says his name so softly he barely hears it the first time. He’s busying himself with untying her, kissing along each place where the rope had been, feeling generous now, settled now. She says it again and he hums against her skin. “Hancock, that was so fucking stupid.” He wants to laugh. Feisty little thing even after that.

He runs a finger down the seam of her pussy. “Uh huh.”

She’s sitting up now, leaning on her hands, scooting away from him, a flurry of angry energy. “That was so dumb, are you listening to me?”

“Hanging on every word.” He leans back to rifle through his pack, searching for some medex. She’s gonna be sore and he might as well not be completely fucking negligent.

She bucks away from him, scrambling to pull her vault suit up her legs, eyes ablaze and he stops his searching. That temper again. Unpredictable as a damn incendiary and just as fucking deadly. She can go either way after they do things like this. He learned that quickly. June likes him to be king of the castle, but she’s always gotta put him in his place afterward. It’s a rush usually, a fun little switch, but today she seems extra agitated. “Did we even clear this place? I don’t think we checked the goddamn basement. We could have fucking died just because you wanted to get your dick wet.” Her words cut, but he can see she’s close to tears. He should have expected this really, the way her mood’s been darkening these past days. “Do you have any fucking clue how goddamn reckless that was!?”

She’s going on and on, working herself red in the face. He notices that she’s holding herself funny, covering herself up, hiding from him. She’s scared, he realizes. Actually frightened. He hasn’t seen this on her in a long time, not since the airport. Hancock frowns. “June.” She startles, like maybe she didn’t realize she was saying all this out loud. “June, look at me.” She does, hands tight across her chest, legs closed like a vice. “You think I would ever put you in harm’s way?” She wilts a little, shoulders going slack. “Huh?”

“No.”

“ _No._ That’s right. You’re the best thing I got.” _I love you,_ he wants to say, _I’m in love with you._ The thought goes off like a bomb inside his own head. He thinks he might pass out, might throw up. Hancock forces the thought from his brain, tries to forget it ever formed. She scoffs, rolling her eyes, but he can see she’s loosened up a little.

He laughs, grateful that she’s like this too. That it’s hard for her to dip under the surface too. “God, sunshine, you really are something, aren’t you?” She’s slid her vault suit halfway on. The air in the library’s a little cold now, even for Hancock. He gets to his feet and helps her up, helps her zip the vault suit all the way back up. The way she melts into his touch feels a little like love, the way he kisses the places where the rope’s marked her feels a little like adoration. Her veins are pale and blue under her skin. It’s so thin, so easy to break. She has so many soft spots, so many places a knife could go. A bullet. Terror coils in his gut.

“I’m sorry,” she says, glancing over her shoulder back at him. He blinks blankly at her, his thoughts still thick, his pulse still racing. “About the temper.”

Hancock hums around a chuckle. “No need.” She turns all the way around to look at him, furrows her eyebrows. There’s that thing again, that dark thing that’s been falling heavy over her. Neither of them have the time or energy. “Come on,” he says, hand firmly on her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.” The crackle of radio has them both jumping. “Hancock.” He grins, raising the radio to his face.

“Well, well, well _Valentine._ Ain’t heard from you in a while.” The synth doesn’t comment on that, never does, and Hancock wonders what all those big old pre-war memories shoved into his circuits really do for him. If they come bumping uncomfortably against the metal. He wonders sometimes if robots feel the passage of time at all. Heady. Hancock glances again over at his pack. They’re out of medex. His ruined nose twitches.

“Is June with you?”

Hancock frowns, all thoughts of chems washed quickly from his brain. Valentine usually only calls about Goodneighbor business, usually calls for information. Never about June, never anything personal like that. Hancock knows June ain’t the best at answering her radio, but it must be goddamn important if Valentine’s coming to him about it. “Where else would she be?” He says, keeping the croon in his voice, trying not to let the way his heart is suddenly pounding, mind suddenly racing, rattle into his voice.

“Well tell her I found out some new information. Tell her we need to meet back at the memory den. A S A P.” Hancock turns and finds June’s eyes wider than he’s ever seen ‘em. And he gets the distinct impression he’s just been let in on something. It flips him over, this realization, that he ain’t really been paying all that much attention. That there’s something happening he doesn’t really know about. All this fretting and grumbling about June’s goddamn mood swings and not a single thought about why. He feels like he’s standing in a house, like a light’s come on in a room he didn’t know was there before.

He swallows, taking his thumb off the radio. “What’s this all about?” June’s white as a ghost. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	12. Chapter 12

Hancock can’t shake the feeling. Even though they’re back on his turf now, back in the roost he rules. And it’s making him so goddamn irritable. Pulled real taut. Primed to snap. He tries not to. At least not at June. He snipes at Fahr when she meets him at the gate instead. “The amount of shit you have to do, Hancock,” she says, eyes aflame, “the amount of shit you left me to do.” He tips his hat at her, means to grin but finds his lips curling into a grimace. He’s nearly sober and his whole body aches. Even the waning light is too bright and every feeling he’s ever had is rising steadily to the surface, all sharp edges. June glances back at him. The setting sun refracts across Goodneighbor’s blown out windows; he can’t see the expression on her face.

The Memory Den is thick with smoke when they head inside, the distinct scent of spilled liquor hanging in the air. Worse than usual. Irma looks unsteady on her feet. Hancock fixes her with a look that withers her then settles into the same chair he sat in last time they did this song and dance. He spreads his legs, taking up space, then leans down and lights a cigarette. June looks back at him again. Even without the sun in it, he can’t really read the look on her face. And he’s never seen Valentine quite like this either, smoking his way through a pack of cigarettes, his circuits practically spinning. “This about synths?” Hancock asks, his own cigarette caught between his teeth.

Valentine’s joints creak as he turns back to look at him. “About the Institute.” June shivers. The room’s so hot the insides of the windows sweat.

Hancock narrows his eyes at her. His sobriety has made him edgy. And quick. _Crafty_ even. And he’s trying to sort through everything June’s ever told him. It ain’t much, now that he’s really thinking about it. They’ve talked about the Institute, sure. Mostly June asking questions. And sometimes, usually when they’ve been drinking, she’ll talk about her nephew, about New York. Never about Sanctuary, Boston. Not after that first night there. And it’s starting to irk him how little he’s put together. About June, about the Institute, about whatever the connection between the two of them is. Jesus Christ, he’s been so fucking distracted. Which Fahrenheit has been telling him. Over and over and fucking over. His cock’s been driving. Heart too. Hancock ashes his cigarette on the floor. “You got any hooch in this place, Irma?” But she’s disappeared back into one of the rooms at the far end down by the stairs. Hancock scowls. “What are we here for, huh?”

“Testing a hypothesis.” Valentine lights another cigarette. Hancock licks at his ruined lips. June’s been sitting dumbly on one of Irma’s velvet chaises since they got here, hands folded neatly in her lap. She looks prim and numb and Hancock can barely contain his irritation. Doesn’t really even know where the fuck it’s coming from. He doesn’t like to be out of the know. It’s probably as simple as that. Likes even less when Fahrenheit’s right. _Juvenile,_ he thinks, running his palms along his pants, _real fucking juvenile._ Valentine turns away from Hancock. “Now June, if you want some privacy we can-“ She waves him off, mouth tight. 

Hancock leans forward. “Privacy? From who?” A tendon in his neck pulses. God _damn,_ he’s keyed up. June and Valentine exchange glances and that raises his hackles even more because goddammit this is _his_ girl. Hell, she and Valentine have been batting back and forth all afternoon, talking about shit from way, way before the war. Shit he can barely keep up with. Another reminder of the gulf between the two of them. One he hadn’t even really considered until this morning. It’s pissing him off in the old way things used to. Way back in Diamond City.

“No, I want him here.” That settles Hancock immediately, a fresh wave of guilt rushing over him. Jesus Christ, he’s over here acting like a fucking kid. Like an asshole. He straightens up, nods at June, grinning at her like he does sometimes in the morning, when sleep’s still hanging heavy and sweet from her.

June doesn’t return the smile. She looks him square in the face and he could swear to god the air warps around her. Stark longing. And fear. That’s all he sees. Palpable, painful, and his chest feels heavy. His whole body feels heavy. Sinking like a stone. He’s missed something. That much is very goddamn clear, but Hancock isn’t sure if he should give a shit about that anymore. _Don’t worry about all this shit,_ he wants to say, _we’ll batten down these hatches and it won’t matter a lick what you’re running from._ But Valentine is already easing her into the lounger. But she isn’t looking at him, she’s looking at Hancock. It’s tight quarters in those loungers. Your breath condenses on the velvet, the darkness makes your eyes pop with light. June’s face disappears into it. Hancock takes a long breath.

June’s got her tits out but Hancock’s not really paying all that much attention to that. He takes a long look down her bare torso, shadows and light falling and rising over the skin, then back, inevitably, up to her face. It’s a look he knows but it’s bigger here. Blanker. And Hancock knows that, on June, blank could mean anything, but it definitely doesn’t mean anything good. Hancock cracks the knuckles on one hand, pulsing his fingers, then leans forward, closer to where the lounger is projecting the memory.

June in the memory stares at the middle distance for a long time. A stocking on one of her legs droops, the garter snapped loose. Light rolls through unseen windows over her body, the room cast in shadows. June blinks. Once, twice, then she bends at the knee. The dress she pulls up over her hips looks unreal to him, unintelligible. Shimmery and soft like nothing he’s ever seen out in the wastes, fabric that puts anything the women up in the Stands used to wear to shame. It’s making him feel some kind of way too, this watery fabric between her fingers, the way it brushes down her hips once she slips it back onto her shoulders. He wonders – even as she stands rigid in this dark room, fingers curled into loose fists – if she misses things like that. Soft things, nice things. Things that are lost to her now forever. That Hancock couldn’t get her even if moved heaven and earth. Shame sits uncomfortably in his chest. He feels small.

June turns her head, hair falling softly over one shoulder. The lights pass over her face in a grid, dark kohl around her eyes, lipstick the color of blood. It’s smeared on one side, some pressed to her cheek. She wipes at it, eyes never leaving that blank middle distance. Hancock frowns, glancing over at Valentine only to find the old bot averting his eyes. A little too early, he realizes, not quite the memory they were gunning for. _Pretty little girl._ Hancock’s head snaps back to the projection at the sound of the voice. A man comes into the frame, fully dressed in the kind of suit his brother would knife a man for. The man passes close enough to June that the fabric of his sleeve brushes her shoulder. June doesn’t move, doesn’t look anywhere but away. _Be right back._ He pats her rump and Hancock finds himself leaning more forward, nearly out of his chair. His hands drift almost unconsciously to the knife at his belt. The man walks away from June, the soles of his shoes clicking against the floor. He glances over his shoulder at her only once, then disappears. The door closes with a soft click and June’s whole body tenses. Her eyes dart from the wall to the table beside the bed and, for the first time, Hancock notices the color. A bright, brilliant blue, unclouded by the cryo and the radiation and Hancock feels vaguely nauseous. Sick and guilty and teetering just above the precipice of outright pissed off. He can’t parse his feelings, can’t even begin to get a fucking grip on his own shit. And he’s so busy trying to do just fucking that, that he doesn’t notice that June is now bent over that bedside table, the man’s wallet in her hand. His watch glitters loose around her wrist. Hancock hears a sink running faintly in the background and he watches every hair on June’s body raise at once. She bends slowly down, reaches down for a pair of shoes haphazard beside the bed. Hancock has only seen shoes like those in some of the dirty magazines Fahr unearthed from beneath the warehouses. Sleek and pointed, tall heel sharp as a weapon. Longer even than the ones Magnolia wears onstage. She slips them onto one foot, then the other. The door swishes open. June’s eyes go blank again.

She’s running. Running down a street so busy and glittering and loud that Hancock resists the urge to cover his hands with his ears. Her shoes are clutched in one hand, pavement blackening the bottoms of her stockings as she flees. Behind her, the man is gaining, pushing violently through the crowd, his voice loud but whatever he’s yelling loses contour in the low din of the crowd. June looks behind her then ducks over, shimmying through the crowd. She spots an alleyway and slips inside, hurrying now toward the very back where boxes lay piled high. She makes herself small behind them, a puddle staining the hem of her dress. The memory goes quiet with her. The crowd from the street has lowered to a hum, the man pursuing her gone. June sighs, brushing back her hair. Hancock catches sight of a faint bruise at the base of her throat, the faint outline of teeth. Hancock bares his own.

Beside her, something stirs, and _goddamn_ Hancock would recognize that metallic whirring anywhere, fingers twitching again toward his belt. The synth jiggers upright, its joints rattling as it disturbs the pile of boxes it was waiting underneath, some of their cardboard sticking to its slick circuits. June backs away from it, skittering across the ground, loose gravel in the alley snagging her stockings until her own skin peaks through rivers of unraveling black. “That’s not possible,” Valentine stands, “that’s not possible.” His voice rises, louder and louder. Hancock can hear the gears spinning in his head “That’s a goddamn second generation synth in 2076. That is supposed to be before the Institute even existed!” June’s eyes go wide in the memory. The synth’s shadow falls over her. She recoils, bringing one manicured hand in front of her mouth. One nail is chipped. One nail is bleeding. “How in the hell-“

June in the memory starts to scream. June in the lounger does too and that’s all Hancock needs before he’s on top of the damn thing, prying open the top. She’s still when the lid finally opens with a loud crack. She’s laying amongst the velvet, her hands one on top of the other over her chest. Her eyes are hazy now, that brilliant blue lost to the bombs, but they’re just as wide as they had been in the memory. “Hell.” Hancock reaches for her. She recoils from the touch. “Hell, June.” She reaches for him then, nails digging into the gnarled skin of his wrist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3\. 
> 
> I know things are like, globally, off the fucking wall, so I hope each and every one of you is doing at least mostly okay.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there are even more glaring typos than usual. It's been a wildly busy month for me so far and I just really wanted to get this out into the world. 
> 
> And don't worry, this fic does have a happy ending ;)

He doesn’t ask that night. Not when he pulls her from the lounger, in the hush that falls over the Den. Not when they limp through Goodneighbor’s neon darkness back to the Statehouse. And when he finally scrounges up the courage, back in the velvet darkness of his room, it’s too late. June’s still and quiet in his bed.

June sleeps like a rock beside him that night. Not a word. Not a sound. Sleeps so deep it scares him, keeps him floating just above sleep, turning to just watch her breathe, to make sure she’s still doing it.

He tried to hold her. Just before dawn. Rolled over, sleep still clinging, and tried to run his hand along her flank, to press his ruined lips up against the skin of her back, silvery in the light from the moon. She’d gone off like a shot, yanking herself away from him, rolling so he couldn’t reach, her eyes like a cat in the darkness.

Hancock tries not to feel wounded by it. Now in the bright light of the morning, spread out across from Fahr in the stateroom, the first hot breakfast he’s had in a month sitting heavy in his gut. But he is, as his mother used to tell him, all over the goddamn place. Thoughts popping off like incendiaries. The synth jerking upright, out into a world where it ain’t supposed to be. The man in the room patting June’s ass like goddamned livestock. The shiver he could see just roll up her; the blank stare. She could have used a man like him, she’d said that night on the ridge in the wastes, could have used a man like him back in New York City. Fahr knocks the table with her foot, upending his feet perched there. She scowls at him. He scowls back but sits up a little straighter. That first hit of jet burns like it’s his first time, but it straightens him up, clears out some of the cobwebs in his head. Fahr’s got a map spread on the table. Super mutant camp movement. Brotherhood, raiders. A few gunner outfits. Some goddamn bots. June’s still sleeping like the dead, door cracked to let just a little light into the room. He can almost feel the fumes of the lounger, drifting coils of memory, slip through the door toward him. What the hell kind of man is he anyway?

June gets up early evening, the sun scattering orange across the dusty floorboards of the Stateroom. He and Fahr has moved on from muscle to numbers, pouring over shipments, the finer points of a trade agreement with some upstarts in Postal Square. She wanders in barefoot, the hem of one of his shirts skimming her bare thighs. And even with everything – the weapon’s grade shitshow that was last night, the way she’d yanked herself away from his touch like he always feared she would – the sight really does it for him. He leans forward, ashing his cigarette. “Well good morning, sweet thing.” He can feel Fahr’s hackles raise just from the sight of her, but if June can feel the escalating tension, she sure doesn’t act like it.

Instead she blinks around the room, her hair hanging around her face. “Is Valentine still here?”

The pinprick of jealousy Hancock feels takes him by surprise, sends him reaching for another cigarette, tense smile on his face. “Back to Diamond City this morning. Didn’t want to wake ya.” June’s mouth tightens. “Left a note for ya.”

She wipes at her cheek, looking off toward the far window. The light from the setting sun casting a frost over her eyes. Like cataracts. So frosted that sometimes, when he looked at her, he could see the necrotic black of his own eyes reflected back. “Let’s go get a drink.”

They’re halfway across Goodneighbor before it occurs to him that he really ought to be the responsible one here. She’s tucked under his arm so when he slows, she slows, but he can feel something vibrating under her skin. A sort of crazed urgency that he knows all too well. Can’t fault her for that, wanting to quiet the rumble inside of her, but she’s been too quiet. Way too fucking quiet. “Third Rail’s gonna be packed tonight, I’d bet.” She glances up at him, one eyebrow raised. “Buncha raiders blew into town on our coattails. So why don’t we head back to the Statehouse, huh? Relax a little.” He winks at her. “Work a few things out.”

June twists away from his grip. “I said I want a drink.”

Hancock follows after her. “Hey now, what’s got you pulled so tight, huh?” She glowers at him and he drops the honey from his voice. “Hey.” She shakes her head, turning again toward the Third Rail. He grabs at her arm. “Hey!” A couple drifters have started to gather. They dissipate with a quick, firm look. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“We can talk about it.” Her mouth tightens. “Pretty intense shit.”

“You gonna force the issue?”

“Of course, I ain’t.” He smooths his thumb across her shoulder, “’course I ain’t.”

He probably would have kept that promise if it hadn’t been for the psycho. New batch. Potent He can smell it before he even inhales and once that sharp, rattling high starts to settle the last 48 hours start to prickle. “So,” he says, rolling a cigarette between two fingers, “so.” June’s on her fifth drink, watching Magnolia with a sort of freaky intensity, but when he starts talking she looks at him like an angry cat. Doesn’t bother him, not with that quick, chemical release surging through him. “You wanna tell me who he was?”

June takes a sip of her drink. “I don’t know who you mean.”

Hancock scoffs. “You know I hate it when you play dumb.” June bristles. “You know something, sweetheart?” He taps his cigarette, ash scattering across the chipped table. “You know more about me than anyone in these goddamn wastes.”

“I never asked you. You didn’t have to tell me anything.” It rattles through both of them. A clean cut inside of him. A bright, humiliating pain. June’s eyes widen, her drink suspended in the air like she’s too afraid to put it down, too afraid to drink it.

Hancock wonders if he looks feral because he is certainly starting to feel it and when Magnolia’s voice hits that high pitch the psycho rumbling through his blood cuts clean through him. Hancock got rage from both sides of his shithole bloodline. His father’s loud, fist against wall, brute screaming rage and the quieter, meaner shit he watched his mother wield all her goddamn life. And _that_ is the particular brand of cruelty he takes hold of now. And so the first raider he sees with a halfway decent rack gets a tip of his hat and a long whistle. Childish, really, but if June’s gonna try and cut to the quick why the hell shouldn’t he? The raider takes the bait. Out of towner, blowing through. Anybody even halfway to a regular wouldn’t fucking dare, anybody who knows anything knows June. “Handsome devil.” The raider purrs, changing course to his table, letting her torn vest fall a little off her shoulders, tits pushed up. He glances over at June and to his surprise, she’s standing. Her mouth is tight, every inch of her perfectly still until her lips twitch and she levels her glass at the wall behind the bar. It whistles past Whitechapel Charlie, shattering when it connects to the brick. A couple raiders at the far end of the bar whistle and whoop but fall quickly silent when they realize that the entire bar is holding its breath. Magnolia stands frozen behind her microphone, her last note hanging in the air. June blinks, her hand still raised, fingers flexing. Her eyes sweep the bat and the look she gives Hancock when their eyes finally meet is almost pleading. And then she turns on her heel, pushing through the crowded bar.

Hancock’s on his feet in an instant. “June.” He pushes past the raider and the rest of the crowd parts around him. “June!”

He catches up with her at the bottom of the stairs. Some of his muscle read the room and they’re looming now over her, blocking her way. Standard protocol for shit like this, but shit has never been standard protocol with June and Hancock waves them off with more than a little irritation. But before she can scurry up the stairs, he grabs her. She twists away from him. “Christ, get your hands off me!”

Hancock tightens his grip. “What the hell’s gotten into you?” 

June hisses, talking through her teeth. “Don’t talk to other girls.”

Maybe it’s the psycho or the secrets or hell maybe it’s the way _I love you_ has been rotting on his tongue for months, but his brain blinks off. That white hot blackness of rage flooding his peripheries until all he can see is her. And not even her. He looms over her, mouth tight. “You telling me what to do in my town?” She doesn’t flinch, just seethes up at him. Tit for tat. Well matched. Like they always been. And suddenly he hates that. His voice like a growl. “You get up and leave town whenever you damn feel like it and you’re telling _me_ what to do.”

June sways a little, frowning. “What?”

“You think I just sit here waiting up while you’re gone.” She freezes. That _is_ what he does actually, most times. Hasn’t touched another man or woman since that second time they’d fucked. And he should know better than to say the shit he’s saying. Bullshit all bullshit, but there’s a wounded animal inside of him that is just _howling._

June twists harder this time, manages to pull herself from his grip. She’s practically spitting. “You’re a pig. You’re a fucking pig” Her upper lip is trembling, her hands balled into fists like an angry kid. “And you’re a coward.”

“Get out.” His mouth has a mind of his own, but once it’s out in the ether the rest of him follows suit and a rage he hasn’t felt in years blooms in his chest. Doubling, tripling. Every fear he’s had about her, himself, the psycho kicks it up, sending it flying. “You think that just because you’ve got that pretty face of yours, you can boss me in my own goddamn town. I’ve been following that pretty ass of yours around these godforsaken wastes, doing you a goddamn favor.” His jaw so feels so tight it might snap. “And this is what I get in return? There’s a quiet part of him, a part that’s grown stronger and stronger in the past year that’s howling, begging him to stop. He doesn’t need a thing in return, doesn’t want a thing in return. The shit she’s given him can’t be tallied. Doesn’t need to be. June’s frozen. Absolutely chilled to the damn bone, he can see that clear as day. But he’s mad, old habits fit easy. The sort of livid, wild mad he used to get when he was just a teenager. Would put his fist through walls, scream and scream until Diamond City security would come and haul him out. The sort of mad he was that night with Vic. He’s going nuclear. Feels subatomic, incendiary. “Get out.”

June looks confused, still there with him but sinking fast, like maybe she hadn’t heard him right. She’s not used to this. She’s supposed to be the live wire, he knows that. He’s the calm one, the referee. Jaunty and charming with an easy violence reserved only for everybody else. Never for her. He can see her scrambling, remembers that she’s pretty damn fucked up too. June looks around the bar, what for he ain’t sure. She opens her mouth, working her jaw over sounds that she can’t quite get into words and he doesn’t know who is talking out of his mouth next. If it’s the psycho or if it’s the goddamn ghost of John McDonough Senior roaring back up from the dead. “There ain’t a place for you here if you can’t remember who’s in charge.”

Her eyes go glassy. They turn absolutely over. She’s looking just a little to the left of him, back at the wall. He can see her spading her insides under, pushing all of that down inside of her until it’s rotten and nothing, the mulch of emotions, of everything they’ve been together, everything they’ve grown. He can feel her pull away, hard away. Further than he ever thought possible. A broken heart. An open wound. Goddamn, what kind of man is he anyway? She turns and heads up those stairs and this time no one stops her. All that quick anger has seen itself out and all that he feels is empty and cold. He’s done it. Right on time, really. Hancock’s never known a good thing that hasn’t slipped right through his fingers. He turns to face a silent bar. Every single eye on him. Like it had been that very first night on the balcony, dressed like a dead patriot, up to his wrists in Vic’s blood. This time he has nothing to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for reading <3


	14. Chapter 14

It could have been a month or it could have been two. Junkie time again. Minutes crawl by; he loses whole weeks in an instant. Hancock dreams of sunlight; can’t seem to find it when he’s awake. He takes a daytripper that makes him see grids of color. He watches them skitter across the walls for days. Wakes from a sleep like a death, crawling across the bed, searching, searching. The last time he felt a hole like this inside himself, he sloughed off his old skin. A cat with nine lives. No spares left now.

Hancock knifes a man outside the Rexford when the daytripper wears off. Can’t remember why. Fahr tells Hancock he deserved it. He takes her word for it, picks at the blood caked under his nails. It leaves a trail down a raider’s bare torso. Picked her up at the Third Rail. Drinks and smokes and the same song Magnolia’s always singing. Can’t get it up. Not for lack of trying. Cock soft in her mouth until it’s too much. Until he pushes her off him, marinates in the lonely quiet of his empty room. None of the old vices work.

He doesn’t think about June head on until the dust clears in his brain. Until the hard stuff is gone and he feels a whole lifetime older. Rickety, brittle. And then she’s all he can think about. His ruined lips down her ribs, thumbs in the hollows of her hips. Her fingers stroking along his scalp. The look of her, wrapped up, blinking sleep away. Safe. Close enough to touch. It cuts like a knife now. Sobriety is cool and clean and painful. He can’t keep it up. Takes a hit of jet in the morning, a hit at night. Chews mentats all day long. Mostly sober, really, considering. Sober enough that when Fahr tells him Valentine’s at the gates, the gears start turning in his head. A quiet buzz of reality settling back in. His own chemical solitude behind him. Painfully. Brutally.

“You look terrible,” the old synth says, hands tucked into the pockets of his trench, pacing like he always does, looking out each window he passes. Always a snoop. 

Hancock lights a cigarette. His fingers tremble around it. He leans forward, elbows on spread knees. “What do you want, Nick?”

Valentine looks over his shoulder, raises a mechanical eyebrow. Hancock figures he deserves that. Can’t remember the time he was this prickly. He lost his charm somewhere, doesn’t try to go looking for it.

“I found something.” Valentine fishes a cigarette from the pack on the table, lights it. Hancock watches the smoke wind around his bare circuits then busies himself again with the floor. “About June’s sister.” Hancock’s dark eyes flick back up at the bot, his whole body still, coiled, primed. “Before the war the Institute was an NGO.” Valentine chuckles, “not that anybody alive now would have a clue what that means. But what it means is that it was big. Backed by a lot of offshore corporate interests. Seems like even back then nobody could figure out what the hell they were trying to do.” Hancock’s brain starts to turn again. Institute, institute, institute. June never wanted to talk about it. He never asked her why. “They got involved with some sort of labor dispute in Boston about a year before the bombs fell. The attorney representing the laborers, was Nora.” Hancock takes a long pull of his cigarette. June never did talk much about her sister. Just parts and pieces of a woman whose husband blew his brains out on the front lawn, who didn’t want the baby she had. Just another thing he’d left buried. Valentine’s gears catch, a quick metallic sound before they right themselves again. “Might be why the Institute was so keen on keeping track of the family before the bombs. Might be the connection we’re looking for, but I wanna run it by June before I do anything with it.” Valentine glances around the room. “Where the hell is she anyway?”

Hancock frowns. “What?”

Valentine’s eyes narrow, he lets the cigarette burn a while between his metal fingers as he sweeps the room. Something quiet seems to dawn on him; Hancock wonders what the hell he sees. “I can see things have gotten…tense.” Hancock scoffs. “She staying at the Rexford then?”

_That’s_ enough to straighten Hancock right up. “What the hell you mean staying at the Rexford?”

“Where else would she stay in Goodneighbor if she’s not staying with you?”

Hancock slumps again. “She ain’t’ in Goodneighbor, Nicky..”

“She’s not here?”

“No. Now if you’re done Nick, I’d appreciate-“

Valentine swears loudly. “She’s supposed to be here.”

Hancock’s chest tightens. “Yeah, well, like you said, things are _tense._ ”

Valentine ashes his cigarette, fingertips clanking on the wood of the table. “No, you big idiot. She _told_ me she was coming here.”

Every muscle in Hancock’s body tenses at once. “What?”

“She was with just the pooch last time I saw her. Said she was headed to Goodneighbor.”

Hancock ashes his cigarette. Sloppy so the embers burn. “When?”

“A week ago. Shit, maybe more now.”

Hancock stands, fingers flexing like they’re searching for something. His voice comes out hoarse. “Where?”

“Out by University Point.”

“What the hell was she doing out there? What the hell were _you_ doing there?” Hancock pulls on his overcoat, decided. “Doesn’t matter.” They’re both standing now, the air in the room whipped by tension. “She’s with Piper.”

“You know that?”

“Got to be. Where else would she go?”

“Probably not to Diamond City, Hancock. Things are tense there.”

Hancock waves him off, heart pounding. “Piper will know where she is then. Hell, June’s probably knocking back some of that rubbing alcohol the Bobrov’s shill. She’ll scatter once she sees me.” His fingers find the blade of his knife. “It’ll be fine,” he says firmly, “It’ll be fine.”

It feels less fine now. Nerves frayed; sun too bright. Kicking at the dust outside the Diamond City gates. They’d both agreed it would be better for him to wait. Didn’t want to draw attention, didn’t want to start a fight. Hancock flicks the still glowing tip of his cigarette toward one of the guards, sneers at him. Might be nice to start a fight.

He doesn’t have a chance to. The guards scatter when Piper comes storming through the gate. There’s tepid blood between them, sure. A bad story here and there that had his people running her out of town, but he’ll always respect her uncanny ability to clear a room. And the guards do clear out. Putting their heads down and drifting back closer to the gate. Not their problem apparently. Classic Diamond City bullshit. And he’s about to call after them, _Diamond City’s Finest, eh?_ when Piper rounds on him and spits. “How could you?”

Hancock wipes his face with his palm, bites back a quick prick of rage. “You’re gonna have to be more specific, sweetheart.”

“How could you lose her?”

That wipes the smirk right off his face. He lowers his voice, almost a growl. “What the hell you mean she’s lost? She ain’t with you?”

“Fuck off, Hancock. Really.” She scowls at him. “Oh and she told me all about your falling out. Nice fucking going. Where the hell is she supposed to go if she can’t go to Goodneighbor?” Hancock frowns. He hadn’t thought of that. Hasn’t been thinking at all in god knows how fucking long. He opens his mouth but finds himself frozen, mute. Piper bristles like she too was expecting him to say something, to have an answer, to solve this. “Who cares?” She says, finally, jaw so tight it’s trembling, “none of that matters if she’s dead.”

Hancock bares his teeth. “I’d keep your goddamn mouth shut about shit that like if I was you.”

“Hey!” They jump at the sound. Valentine puts a hand on each of their shoulders, forcing them both to step unsteadily backward. “Everybody just calm the hell down, alright? We’ll find her. Now has anybody checked Sanctuary?” Silence. “Well, alright then.”

She isn’t there. Hasn’t been for weeks. Came back once after she left Goodneighbor and then not again. And if Preston hadn’t been so goddamned stunned, he might have throttled Hancock. _I thought she was with you,_ he’d said. They’d all said. _I thought she was with you._

Hancock takes a long drag of a cigarette, lets the smoke roll out of his ruined nose. A breeze rustles the tall grasses by the riverbank where he’s gone to be alone, the muted hum of the settlement at his back. A bloodbug drifts quietly across the river, bobbing, drifting. Lonely. What he really wants is s good hit of jet. But he needs to think, needs to figure this shit out. “Where did you get off too, doll?” He asks the ether, “where’d you go?” None of the answers comfort him. None of the places she could be are good. She ain’t meant for this world. No matter how long she stays here there’s a softness in her that Hancock knows ain’t ever going away. He knew that, knew that when he let her walk out of Goodneighbor. Maybe for the last time. Jesus fucking Christ, he should have known better. Done better. Hancock toes the water. Might be time to go for a swim. For real this time. To toss and twist and drift away. Maybe his body will find hers.

“Quit pouting.” Hancock nearly jumps out of his skin. The old synth is silent as a ghost when he wants to be. He brushes through the tall grass up beside Hancock, the reflection of the moon on the water drifts across his metallic skin. “So you fucked up, so what?”

“You have _got_ to be kidding me right now.”

Valentine ignores him. “You’ve always been like this. For as long as I’ve known you.” Hancock looks back out over the river, at the watery moon. He doesn’t know if he should hope she’s alive to see it. Anything could be happening to her. _Anything._ Not a lot of it good. So many soft places to slip a knife into. He feels sick. His heart aches. Bottomless. “You’re a good leader, good fighter. Just a little short-sighted.”

Hancock snorts, incredulous. “Not on the market for diplomatic advice today, Nicky, try me another time.”

He joints creak as he sits down on the riverbank. Hancock offers him a cigarette. A silent exchange, just the soft pop of the lighter, Valentine’s rickety inhale. “You’re not alone in this, you know? We’re all gonna look for her. Tear the Commonwealth apart if we have to. You know that.”

“Sure, sure.” And then, “I love her, you know.” It echoes in his own head, echoes out over the water. But it’s a relief, finally, to say it out loud.

They sit in silence for a long time. “Well,” Valentine says, clearing his throat, “I would suggest that the next time you see her, you let her know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3 <3


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick update for you guys <3\. The next few will be much longer.

She’s softer than he remembers. Or maybe it’s just been too long. Heart and hands growing fonder in the long stretch since he’s last had her in his arms. He feels her wrap her arms around his neck, feels her hips rock against his, straddling him now. Hancock lets his head loll onto the back of the couch, let’s her run her long fingers along his shoulders. June rocks her hips again, grinding down on his trousers. “That’s it.” He takes a handful of her ass, cants his own hips sharply up. “Atta girl.” June feels solid in his grip and relief blooms sharply in his chest at the thought. Though he can’t place exactly why. She’s always been here, ain’t she? Right where she belongs. He feels like he’s daytripping, a little technicolor. Easy like he’s just figured something out, something big and troublesome. Hancock reaches up to start on the zipper of her suit but finds her wearing instead a dress he ain’t ever seen before. Gossamer fabric, falling off her shoulders, so thin he can see the outlines of her nipples. Different. But he ain’t complaining. He presses a kiss to her sternum, takes a handful of each side of the dress as he pushes it up over her hips. “Well, ain’t you pretty.” June rocks back, spreads her legs a little wider. An invitation. Hancock grins into the skin of her throat, takes it, fingers hot and wet where he finds her. June rocks almost frantically against him. “Easy,” he croons, “we don’t gotta rush sweet thing. Let me play.” He looks up at her, grinning, then stills his hand. His grin falters. She’s smiling, but there’s something sad about it. Something fearful in her eyes. Her eyes. He frowns. Her eyes. Clear and pretty and blue. Hancock’s gut twists.

“You look terrible,” Valentine says, leaning against the back of the couch closest to the Stateroom’s windows.

Hancock sniffs, dragging one hand down the side of his face. Fahr’s out by the stairs, the red pop of her hair just visible beyond doors. He figures Piper’s still sleeping, her absence loud in the room. June’s louder still. An aching, widening crater in the middle of the Commonwealth, inside of him. “Had a hell of a dream.”

“Anything useful?”

Hancock frowns. “In the dream?” Valentine just inclines his head. “No, not really.”

Valentine straightens, the last burning remnants of a cigarette caught between his teeth. “Well, then. Let’s find something useful.”

They move fast. Faster maybe than Hancock’s ever seen something move in these godforsaken wastes. June, it seems, has had a way with pretty much everybody. And pretty much everybody seems keen on finding her.

The Minutemen are no surprise, showing up in force outside Goodneighbor. Hancock knows she’s been hoofing around for them since the very beginning. They link their settlements like a chain, make a wide search grid. The Railroad too. Hancock’s had a tacit agreement with them for years. Information in exchange for use of some of his tunnels. He opens up the whole underground network for them, has his people carve out new paths for them to search. For a person, for a corpse. He ain’t getting much sleep lately. Bleary eyed, sure he’s hallucinating, when a big Brotherhood tin can shows up outside Goodneighbor’s front gates, nose wrinkled like he’s smelled something awful. _The Brotherhood would like to extend an official offer to aid in the search._ He’s hard-pressed to deny them.

And Hancock remembers just what he’s good for. Planning, resources. Brutality. _Do what ya gotta,_ he says when a few of his people catch wind that some raiders are out bragging in the Combat Zone about some pretty little thing they picked up out in the wastes. Squealed like a pig, they say. _Do whatever you gotta._ They have to scrub down the warehouses after that. But June ain’t there. Doesn’t seem to have ever been there. A relief and not one. And that hopeless feeling Hancock woke up with the morning after the dream grows, seems to be contagious. A sense of loss hanging in the air thick like smoke. _She did more for the Commonwealth than anybody I’ve ever known,_ Piper says one night at the Third Rail, more than a few drinks in, _she cared so much about everything. About the people she loved._ He’s learning about June now. About who she was with Piper, with Valentine, with Preston. Not wholly different but nuanced. There are sides to her that Hancock never saw, or saw in glimpses, or was too busy in his own goddamn head to really see clearly. And there’s a longing inside of him that feels powerful enough to break his bones. To know her. Better. For longer. For as long as she’ll let him. If she can still let him. _Goddamn,_ he’ll never forgive himself if she’s dead. And it seems, as each day passes, more and more like that’s probably where she is. Somewhere in the ground. Or worse, rotting on the surface of it. Not important enough to whoever snatched her up to even bury. _That_ makes him feel closer to feral than he’s ever been. Hancock tucks that rage away, saves it up, sure now that he’s gonna need it. And each night, sleep is harder to come by. Each morning, he’s a little stiffer inside himself.

But one morning, two weeks after June first showed up missing, one of Hancock’s top guys comes back through the gates of Goodneighbor, a tattered folder under his arm. “Found this in Sanctuary,” he says, “thought it looked important.”

“It’s a dossier,” Valentine tells him, paging through the folder back in the Stateroom, “of sorts. Looks like her sister put it together. Looks she was trying to get her out of some trouble.”

Hancock stops him when he flips past a picture of June. “Hold it.” The old synth raises an eyebrow and Hancock nods toward the photo, lifting it from the folder. It’s odd to see an actual, honest to God photograph of June. Hancock doesn’t know anyone alive who’s had their picture taken and its mere existence sudden, solid proof of her life before all this. That day on the airfield, when she’d cried out, shivering, terrified that the universe would blot her out of her existence here, now, takes a new shape. That shame comes so easy. All the things he wishes he’d said, done. He runs his thumb along her cheek, across her hair. It doesn’t even really look like her. Black and white, a little grainy. She’s got dark lipstick on, some of smeared off one side of her mouth, a faint bruise under one eye. He can tell by the way she’s holding her jaw that she’s trying to look tough, can tell by the look in her eye that she’s petrified. He just wants to soothe her, now more than anything. _Ain’t no reason to try and act tough,_ he wants to tell her, _I can be your muscle._

“Mugshot,” Valentine says, closing the dossier.

Hancock runs his fingers again along the faded paper. “What was she in for?”

“Solicitation.”

Hancock pauses. Glances up at Valentine then back down at the picture of June. It shouldn’t surprise him. The smear of her lipstick, that bruise. The way she’s stood in that memory, stripped down, frozen. So it ain’t a shock, not really. And all it makes him really feel is sad. Because he knows how finicky she is about being touched. Knows how she likes to be coaxed, teased. He don’t imagine the men like the one in the memory would have the patience; don’t imagine she would have liked being touched by them all that much. That well of rage deepens.

“I’ve seen this name before, “Valentine says, tapping a metallic knuckle against the paper, always quick to change a difficult subject, “the district attorney in charge of the case. I’ve seen that name in some of the new documents we found about the pre-war Institute.”

So she was in trouble. Maybe a lot. He’s known that. Known that for a while. The Institute bit is new, sure, but it don’t mean shit now. Not if she’s dead, not if she’s in danger. Hancock hands the photo back to Valentine, takes the folder and presses it closed. “We don’t need to be nosing through her private things. Not if they ain’t gonna help us find her.”

It’s Piper who sniffs out the missing link. Three weeks June’s been gone. Each day, each hour carving out a new well of terror and self-loathing inside of him. He can barely stand it, can barely keep himself afloat. And he’s awash in a sea of jet when Piper comes back in the dead of night after disappearing for days, so keyed up that Hancock can feel the energy wafting off her. She slams her closed fist onto the table and says with a confidence that stills the room, “Kellogg.” Hancock hears Valentine’s gears creak, watches as Fahrenheit raises both eyebrows. “Kellogg has her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much reading <3


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: graphic depictions of violence, implied sexual violence

He ain’t hard to find. Hancock may be a two-bit junkie but he’s a hell of a strategist. Some garden variety mercenary ain’t gonna be able to hide from him, Institute connections or no. Not with Hancock’s resources. And not with Hancock’s manic, sleep-starved desperation to find June. It’s in his blood now, coursing through him like a hit. He’ll die if he doesn’t. That’s the feeling. Bright and angry and manic. Subatomic. He can feel the fallout all around him.

Takes ‘em two days to pin down where Kellogg’s squirreled himself away after Piper finds his name. Two days where Hancock sharpens the feral parts of himself. Valentine goes on and on. Institute this, prototype that. Hancock ain’t interested. He stares at the peeling wallpaper in the Stateroom and runs the blade of his knife along his leathered fingers. Because he’s decided that it doesn’t matter if June is dead or just fine. Either way, he’s gonna gut Kellogg like a fish.

It starts to matter, really fucking matter, when they’re casing Kellogg’s spot from the opposite roof. Matters a whole fucking lot if she lives or dies. Because it’s real now. In a way it hadn’t been in the smoke-thick air of the Statehouse, out on the balcony watching the neon nuclear sunsets and biding his time. Real in a way that makes Hancock’s insides twist. He’s a dead man walking if she’s gone. He knows that, can feel the way her absence has carved him out inside. He wonders, letting the half burn of his cigarette drift from his fingers down to the rubble below, how he managed without her. Hancock glances down at his hands, at the whirl of mottled flesh. He hadn’t really, managed without her. MacCready shifts beside him; Hancock tucks his hands into his pockets. “See anything?”

“Nothing useful,” he sniffs, lowering his scope and wiping at his mouth with his sleeve. “Got a couple turrets up top but they’re rusted to shit. I’d bet they’ve got nothing to do with this.”

“Leave ‘em.” Hancock says, scuffing his boot on the cracked concrete under his feet. MacCready raises an eyebrow. “Don’t want to draw attention. Not until we got June in our sights.” Mac lowers his rifle, roots around in his pockets for a cigarette. Hancock draws him a light, lights one of his own, and takes a step back, looking hard at the building.

This ain’t the kind of place Hancock likes to be. Ain’t the kind of place he’d normally send his people. Too fortified, too obviously kept up. Out in the middle of goddamn nowhere but with a distinctive air of…something. Hancock sniffs. He can smell the distinctive whiff of a gas fire. Tries not to think too hard about what that might mean. He’s trying not to think too hard in general. There’s a realist inside of him, whittled down by a life out in these wastes, that knows what they’ll find inside won’t be what they want to. But there’s another part of him too, quiet and almost soft, that is sure that maybe June can’t die. Because she’s soft and sweet and small when he’s got his arms wrapped around her, but she’s been through hell. Several hells. The bombs, that deep freeze, whatever the fuck happened in New York that sent her running off to Boston. Hell, the girl scrapped her way through the Commonwealth for months before she ever landed on his doorstep. But not alone, he thinks, scanning the faces on the roof with him, never alone. Not like she’s been for god knows how long now.

Kellogg’s first move is a bad one. Though, as Hancock pulls his shotgun from his back, there probably ain’t a thing Kellogg could have done that would have saved him.

But this one is particularly bad because it starts with a speech. A speech that everyone else in the room seems to be content to entertain. Even Piper, the energy off her strong enough to power a whole goddamn city, has paused, finger still on the trigger, to listen to what he’s got to say.

But Hancock ain’t interested because Hancock can’t see June. He’s scanned this big room and can’t find even a trace. And an awful feeling starts building inside of him. Like maybe she ain’t here, just Kellogg. Like maybe he killed her. Buried her in some hole somewhere. Left her out on the side of some road. Like maybe she’s been dead and gone this whole goddamn time He can’t stand it. Cannot fucking stand it. MacCready glances over at him when Hancock cocks the shotgun, takes a sidestep to get out of his way. Hancock squints up at one of those old pre-war fluorescent lights hanging from the tall ceiling. He lifts the gun. He takes aim.

The shotgun blast sucks all the air out of the room. A quick shower of sparks from the light and then silence, Kellogg briefly stunned. Which is fine by him. Hancock ain’t in the mood for bravado, for bullshit. He’s on him like a feral, knocking him to the ground, sending the synths at his side scattering. They land so hard the impact rattles through him, the shock of pain a thrill. It’s been a long time since Hancock’s been in a fight like this. Skin to gnarled skin. Close enough they can feel each other’s heartbeats through their knuckles. But his body remembers. A born scrapper. He hears Valentine call his name, his voice muted in the sudden rush of energy in the room. Someone topples over a metal desk, the singed sound of synths firing off. Hancock can hear the metallic ping of MacCready’s rifle, the sound of crunching gears.

The first punch hits like a drug. He can feel Kellogg’s teeth through the skin of his cheek, feel a snap at the hinge of his jaw. His blood’s hot on Hancock’s skin. Inhumanely hot, like he’s gonna go ghoul too. “Where the fuck is she?” He digs what’s left of his nails into Kellogg’s face and slams his head down so hard on the concrete he can hear his skull rattle. “Where the _fuck_ is she?!”

Kellogg grins, blood streaking down his teeth. The feral kind of exhilaration that men like him get when they smell blood, even their own. “Is that what you’re all here for? All this for one girl?” Kellogg flips him, lands a punch of his own. Hancock grunts, scrambling backward. “Short sighted. There’s much bigger things at play than that pretty little popsicle.” Hancock claws for the knife at his belt, grabs hold, then brings the blunt end of it so hard that Kellogg staggers back, unsteady on his feet, grabbing hold of desk and terminals as he goes stumbling backward. But that look is still on his face. That sick smirk unwavering. “Now don’t worry about your little bitch. I’ve been taking good care of her.” Hancock’s on his feet now, crouched like predator. He knows, vaguely, that the room around him has erupted. Smells the tang of gun smoke, the metallic rot of burnt circuits. Kellogg catches his tongue between his teeth, a wild look in his eye. “You know what girls like her are good for.”

Rage like a bolt. Worse than he’s ever felt. So white hot he feels like he could burn. And he’s on him again, pinning him back onto the concrete, slick now with blood. “Stay put.” His knife meets resistance just under the collarbone but not for long, muscle splitting, tendons cracking. Kellogg’s smug look is gone in an instant. He howls like a dog. There’s a roaring in Hancock’s ears that subsumes every rational thought. It isn’t enough. He could tear Kellogg to pieces, and it wouldn’t be enough. But maybe he will. Rip him to shreds anyway. He wraps his fingers around Kellogg’s neck, yanks the knife out with his other hand. Kellogg jerks underneath him, grapples almost unseeing for the blade. And then the air slows. He can feel something shift around him. And then, quietly, distantly, he hears her name. Over and over like a chant. Piper’s voice. More desperate than he’s ever heard it. Pitch rising. Hancock looks up and, for a moment, can’t process what he’s seeing. Because he’s been dreaming about her. Some lush, soft. Her body underneath his, safe and real and alive. Others bright with blood, nightmares that hung over him, building and building until he felt bowed by the weight of it. But even in his darkest dreams, June never looked quite like this. Shades paler than he remembers. A look on her face like she’s been blown open.

She wanders into the room like she’s in a trance, hair limp around her shoulders. The shirt and pants Kellogg’s dressed her in hang loose on her body, each movement revealing new skin, all of it black and blue, tinged with yellow. The darkest bruise, that he can see at least, all along the bridge of her nose, spread out toward one eye. It’s red, that eye, bright, vessels popped bloody. She’s favoring one side. One arm hanging a little lower than the other, a single handcuff around the wrist, so tight it’s cut a bloody groove in her skin. His knife clatters to the ground as he stands. Kellogg moans, curling in on himself, blood pooling under him. June blinks, wavers. Fear becomes rage.

Piper’s got the pooch. Damn thing nearly chewed through the muzzle Kellogg had it in, took a bite out of Valentine when he tried to grab hold of its collar. But it seems mollified by Piper even if it can’t take its eyes off June. Hancock can’t either. On his knees now, just inches from where June has fallen onto her own. “Let me look at you,” he says, that rage bled dry, replaced by a roiling wash of terror and relief. He reaches for her, “let me check-“

“If you touch me it’ll be the last thing you do.” Hancock freezes. He can’t read her, face shut so tight it’s like that very first day they met. June’s hands lay limply in her lap but the rest of her is rigid, almost brittle. He can see it now, her incandescent anger, but she’s fading fast. Lips so dry they’re cracking, skin sallow, just the faintest tremble in her fingers. He can almost smell her fear. The decision is easy. There’s nothing to her, scooped up into his arms like a bride. June doesn’t try to fight him, shivers once, like a single quiet act of protest, and then sinks down into herself, limp, heavy.

“He touch you?” Hancock asks as he sets her onto one of the desks. She isn’t looking at him. “He _touch_ you.”

Her eyes flit to him, hugging herself now, still so brittle. “Don’t be a letch.”

Hancock snorts. “I ain’t.” He looks back at Kellogg, laying spread out like a star. He ain’t dead yet, but he’s on his way. Skin the color of the concrete, fingers on one hand flexing weakly. There are a hundred things Hancock could do to him, a hundred things he would deserve. None of them matter now. He turns back to June. “We’re taking you back to Goodneighbor. You’re gonna see Amari. We’re gonna get you looked over.”

“Oh so _now_ you want me in Goodneighbor.”

Hancock goes rigid. All those long nights searching blanched his memory. That self-loathing coming from all sides. He’d forgotten, mostly, about the root of it. About the fight. And he doesn’t know what to say, can’t even begin to try and figure out what the fuck he _should_ say. So he doesn’t. Just says her name, pulls her toward him so he can lift her again, get her the fuck out of this awful room.

“Fuck you,” she hisses, trying squirm away. But he’s solid, strong. He pulls her even as she fights him, her voice rising. “Fuck you! Don’t fucking touch me! Fuck you!” The room is quiet. Everyone fallen into a hush. Piper whispers something soft to the pooch; Valentine’s knees creak as he bends down over Kellogg. June softens too, in his arms. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

He doesn’t know what she means and maybe he doesn’t need to. “I know, doll, I know.” She starts to cry, just quietly, and Hancock feels neutered by his own fear. He gentles his hands underneath her, steadies himself so he don’t jostle her. She’s cold to the touch. Freezing again, like he knows she hates to be. And he is _heartbroken._ Ain’t never hurt like this. Gutted. Hancock ain’t sure there’s a thing in the whole world that could feel worse than this. That could _be_ worse than this.

June shifts in his arms, voice so quiet he knows he’s the only one who can hear her. “I wish you would have let me die there with him.”

Yeah, that’s worse. “You don’t mean that.” Valentine has come up beside them, gears turning so fast in his head that Hancock can hear them spin. Going on and on. Genetic tracking this, lawsuit that. Pre-war bullshit Hancock couldn’t give a shit less about. “You don’t mean that, June.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3 
> 
> Just a quick little update: as of right now I have a companion piece planned for this. It'll be from June's pov and run parallel to this one (filling in some of the story, hopefully adding some interesting perspective). Not sure when I'll start posting but it's definitely in the works.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick update after a long time.

She says it again when they’re back in Goodneighbor. When she’s been scrubbed down and hooked up to enough radaway to give her the shakes. His June looks at him with those frosted eyes, opens her thick lips and says, “You should have left me.”

And it ain’t a shock this time but it sure as hell hurts like one. Hancock’s slouched on the couch, hands hung limp between his spread knees. Worn out, just worn the fuck out. “You don’t want that.”

He watches her bristle like a cat. In that same chair where she always sits but layers different now. Him and her both. She scoffs. “Maybe I do.” He ain’t got a response to that, can see by the way her shoulders slump that he don’t really need one “What do you even know about me?”

 _More than you think,_ he wants to say but know that ain’t right, so instead he just says, “all I need to.” And the way her face softens makes his chest ache. The way she slams it shut too. He knows it’s her only defense. Knows that she needs defenses right now. They’ve had their fair share of knocks out in these Wastes. Bruises and gouges and bones to set. He’s stitched up thighs and hands and hips, ran his tongue across whole expanses of her bruised skin. But _this_ , this is different. Because ghouls don’t go for the face, raiders don’t go for the face. There’s some real personal bullshit about the shiner she’s got, all those broken capillaries in that one eye. And it makes him angry in ways he knows she don’t need right now. So he lights a cigarette and settles back against the couch. Fiddles with the record player, looks everywhere but at her. ‘Cause maybe she don’t want to be looked at right now, maybe she just wants to sit curled up here in the stateroom, run her fingers through her pooch’s matted hair. He can understand that; he can abide that. Hancock can abide most anything now that she’s back in front of him, all in one piece. She could scream and fuss and howl for the rest of his goddamned life and all he’d feel is relieved. Relieved that Amari took a good, long look at her and confirmed that _no,_ Kellogg ain’t touched her, not like _that_ at least. Relived that he gets to watch her chest rise and fall, even if it is only out of the corner of his eye. That he gets to hear her voice even if it’s spitting venom. This all might be the most selfless he’s ever felt, the most outside himself. Feels terrifying like standing up on that balcony for the very first time had. A harsh little reminder that in his world of disposable things and disposable people, she ain’t. That her destruction is his destruction, that it always will be now. It’s too big to hold. He stands, slipping a pack of cigarettes into his coat pocket. “Be right back.” June says nothing, leans a little over to let her head rest on the arm of the chair. It’s chilly in the Statehouse, the orange light of evening settling in the room like lamplight.

Fahr’s waiting for him, standing across the stairwell, eyes ablaze, mouth a tight line. Hancock lights a cigarette, leans against the wall. A few of his boys start to make their way down the stairs. They can feel the incendiary air. Hancock says nothing, knows Fahr will light that spark all on her own. It doesn’t take long. “I heard her talking to you today.” Hancock lets his eyes roll a little back in his head, takes a long exhale, lets the smoke drift up to the rafters. Goddamn, he’s worn out. Ain’t sure if he’s ever been so fucking worn out. “You gonna let her talk to you like that? In front of the men?”

“Not now, Fahr.”

He can feel the way that ruffles her feathers even though he ain’t looking. The hiss in her voice echoes. “You’re the mayor of this goddamn town and you’re gonna let some little-“

Hancock snaps to look at her, teeth bared. Knows he must look near feral the way she straightens, hides a flinch. “You go hard of hearing while I was gone?” Her nose twitches, that grimace of hers sharp enough to cut. “Didn’t think so.” He takes a long drag of his cigarette, flicks the still burning butt onto the floor, watches the dust briefly ignite. “Let it go.” Behind him, he can hear June rummaging. Always the little scavenger. He turns his back to the door, lets her.

When Hancock makes his way back to the Statehouse that night, flush with Whitechapel Charlie’s whiskey and feeling swamped in his own thoughts, he finds that June has showed herself to bed. His bed. And while that makes him feel all kinds of different ways, he ain’t about to test his luck and get in with her.

So he watches her for a while, propped in an arm chair by the open window, the pale light of the moon falling across her face. He smokes through a pack of cigarettes, then another. Chews mentats until his tongue goes numb. That crystalline relief has worn off, replaced with something he don’t really have the faculties to name. Fear maybe. But more nuanced than that. Closer to dread. That maybe the June that left Goodneighbor isn’t the same one who came back. None of that synth shit, no. He’d know his June. Knows her better now than he ever has. And she knows him, all his rough edges. Now every single one. He tries not to think too hard about it, pops another mentat.

He ain’t unprepared for Piper the next morning, figures it was only a matter of time before she let him have it, but it still spikes his ire to see her come in. All bluster. The red coat of hers flapping in the breeze she makes by her own stomping, the press badge in her hat a little askew. “June’s asleep.” He says, examining the lit end of a cigarette.

“I came here to talk to you.”

Hancock chuckles, exhaling smoke, leaning back to take a nip of whiskey. “Well ain’t that nice.”

“I have a bone to pick, Mayor Hancock.”

He looks up at her and knows by the way she doubles down on him that he must look _wild._ “Well then I would suggest you start.”

“This is your fault. All of this. All of this is your fucking fault. And I want you to know that.” 

Hancock chuckles, works a tender spot in his neck. He’s still starting at the lit end of hs smoke, watching the ember turn to ash. “Ain’t nothing worse than what I’ve been telling myself.”

“Why the hell would you kick her out of Goodneighbor?! What the _fuck_ got into you?” She pounds each syllable into his table with her fist, bent over so they’re eye level.

Hancock runs his tongue over his teeth. He’s been trying to work that out himself, long nights of just thinking, staring at himself in the mirror that he might be able to unearth some method to his madness. But he ain’t about to share that with _Piper_ of all fucking people. “Well she’s here now ain’t she. She’s here and she’s safe.”

Piper straightens. She’s got a look in her eye. Predator found prey. Checkmate. “What the hell makes you think she’s gonna stay here?” And it rocks him back, the sheer force of it. Because he hadn’t considered that she might go. That he’d have to coax her to stay. That maybe the shit he said to her that night scarred over deep. That maybe she’d never be able to look at him in the eye again. A nightmare.

One that comes true two days later when June comes out into the Stateroom and tells him that she’s leaving. Dressed in some slip of a thing, nipped in at the waist, a pale yellow that matches her hair.

And she looks like herself. Too much like herself. So much that he knows she’s spaded whole mountains under inside of her. And he wishes he could take her by the shoulders, wishes he could wrap his arms around her. _Tell me,_ he wants to say to her, _tell me._ But he’s himself still, despite everything and instead says “Like hell you are.”

“With Piper.”

And he stands even though he knows it’s already been decided. That he can’t keep her here. That he wouldn’t _want_ to keep her here. Not if she doesn’t want to be kept. A force of nature. “Christ, June, Be careful.” And he wants to say, and he should say, _you’re always welcome here_ but every part of him has gone rigid and stiff and useless. But maybe she knows that’s what he means to say, maybe she can tell, because June reaches out to touch him. Right on that rad burnt skin she somehow doesn’t seem to mind. He lays his hand on hers, squeezes. And she lets him. But she still turns her back. Still walks out of the statehouse. He watches her from the balcony. Some of his men down below turn up to look at him. They don’t wait around for speeches.

Hancock waits ten days before he decides. Five days rotting in the Third Rail, working his way through the top shelf and then through the moonshine. Watching Magnolia croon, her voice so thick he can almost see it in the air. And then he finds his way to the Memory Den. Lives there. Tries to take every memory of June and just bathe in them. 

Irma has to yank him out, let him lay sputtering on the carpet for hours until his vision clears and when he stumbles out into the bright sunshine of a Goodneighbor he hasn’t seen in days, he realizes that if he wants her, he’ll have to go get her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	18. Chapter 18

It doesn’t work quite like that. Hancock leaves under cover of darkness with enough supplies to last him three days. He returns to Goodneighbor two weeks later with a barely healing bullet wound in his shoulder and a gash on his thigh wide enough that he knows it’s gonna need more than just a couple stims. And he returns without June.

Which maybe shouldn’t surprise him but does. Like even after everything this little kingdom he’s built would see him through. A king in his castle. The most powerful ghoul in the goddamn Commonwealth. But June doesn’t play by the rules. Not his, barely even her own.

He’s not sure what he expected. Maybe to see her waiting for him just outside the gate, perched on some rubble, long legs swinging. But he didn’t find her waiting anywhere. Just the ghost of her. Lingering around every corner. Every hazy billboard, every shock of blonde. She’s been around, he gleans, from traders and settlers and the occasional raider. But nobody seemed to know where she was headed, where she came from. He went to Sanctuary as a last resort, gritted his teeth when he _begged_ Preston to tell him where June was. _If she wanted you to know where she was, you’d know._ So maybe Hancock is an old dog that’s got some new tricks, because Preston still has all his teeth. Because he left Sanctuary without another word, without a fuss at all. Even if the horizon outside that shitty little settlement had seemed suddenly so vast and empty he felt cored out by it. No idea where the fuck she could be. Anywhere, _anywhere._ And Hancock knows he’s got several legs up on June ‘far as the Wastes go, but he ain’t never been quiet about any damn thing in his life. She can surely hear him coming from miles away. And he realized, as he trekked through the Commonwealth, that the only time he ever saw June was when she wanted him to. That for so long, that had been exactly what she wanted.

So he’s back in Goodneighbor, feeling neutered and strange and for once the chems don’t strip that feeling clean. The only thing that comes even close is sitting out on the balcony, smoking through a pack or two of cigarettes, watching the stars arc across the sky. He tries to dissolve every romantic notion he had of himself; tries to chase off every clean, pretty, messy, brutal thought he’s ever had about her. Tries to remember the men and women he fucked before her, the people he’d kill for, the people he maybe thought he loved. Until he doesn’t anymore. Try. Until all he does is sit out on that balcony and watch.

But not close enough apparently. Because one morning he turns away from the balcony, wanders stiff into the stateroom and finds June standing right in the middle of it. And he should probably grovel, should probably fall to his knees with the weight of the shock and relief and terror that has opened wide up inside of him. But he is, still, himself. And so he cocks his head, saunters a little closer to where she and Piper and the pooch are standing and says: “Well, well, well.”

And he expects to see that familiar flash in her eyes, that sweet temper flaring the same way Piper is predictably bristling at her side. But what he gets instead is a whole lot of fucking nothing and then, worse, she smiles at him. That bright, broad smile she gave the very first day out by the gates. The one he knows now means nothing, comes from nowhere inside of her that he wants to be. “Hancock.” Not John but not Mayor Hancock either. A chilling neutral. At least _Mayor Hancock_ would mean she was pissed as all hell at him. At least that would mean something. _Goddamn_ he wishes she was angry. Wishes she was spitting and kicking and hollering. Wishes she would knock him right in his goddamn teeth. But she ain’t even meeting his eyes, even when she’s looking right at him. At least Piper’s scowling, at least the pooch has his ears back. “I need your help.” She says, voice light like a little chime.

“You got it.” He says without evening thinking.

She cocks her head, raises an eyebrow, almost the June he knows. But he knows this ain’t his June. Knows that this bright, shiny surface is the furthest away she’s been from him. “You don’t even know what I need help with.”

“Don’t need to.” And there’s a moment when the mask slips, just a second, so quick he almost misses it. And he can see that beneath the smile that is starting to strain at the corners of her mouth, she is cold and blank and quiet. Frozen over.

It ain’t a hard job. Just one that requires a key. A key he happens to have tucked away in one of the old desks in the Statehouse. He doesn’t ask what they’re looking for, doesn’t care about that near as much as he cares about showing June that he’d take himself to pieces if she asked. She doesn’t though. Just asks him to help Piper look through the ground floor of one of the old buildings at the far end of Goodneighbor. An old courthouse, if he remembers right. They’d excavated all kinds of weird shit from there when he first took over. Hadn’t even got through most of the mess, left the rest to rot. They’re ass deep in it now.

Piper groans loudly from the other side of the room, turning a drawer upside down before tossing it aside. The pooch opens one eye, then closes it, settling back down at the base of the stairs, one ear perked up. June’s up ‘em, scouting around the second floor. Light on her feet as always, but Hancock’s got one ear trained just for her. He’s still got enemies in the city, he reasons, maybe more now that he’s been in a stupor for, fuck, weeks probably. He ain’t about to let anything happen to her in his town. And that’s what he tells himself as he strains to hear her faint footsteps above him. Because lovesick still doesn’t fit easy, fits even less easy now that she’s so far from him. There’s a part of him inside that feels dead. It ain’t the first time, but it’s been a while. A long fucking while. Hazy Diamond City memories. Way back. “Are you going to help at all or?” Piper’s standing now, hands on her hips.

Hancock chuckles, cigarette caught between his teeth. “Trying to.” She rolls her eyes, bends back down to rummage again through. He kicks over a desk, watches it break apart as it hits the ground. “Ain’t neither of you told me what we’re even looking for, hell.”

“This.” Piper says, a file clutched in her raised fist. He can’t read her expression, just knows that it makes what little hair he’s got left stand on end. Because she is suddenly a flurry of energy. Tightly coiled, jaw so rigid he’s surprised she ain’t cracking her teeth. “We gotta take these to Valentine.” She glances out the room’s narrow window, at the orange-y light skittering across its broken out glass. “If we leave now, we could make it before it gets too dark.”

“Hancock.” They both freeze. June’s standing at the bottom of the stairs, her hand pressed against one side of the wall. She’s in the same dress as when she left, pale yellow, nipped in at the waist, hem just below her knees. Dirtier now, of course. Ripped along the hem. He fights the sudden, almost animal, desire to hike it up past her hips, put her on her back on this dusty floor, spell his apology out in clear, no uncertain terms. But she looks almost ghostly and Hancock wonders just how long she’s been standing there, just listening, so quiet it frightens him. “We could use another gun on the way to Diamond City.”

Piper goes practically nuclear. “What! Why?”

Hancock watches June lay her hand on Piper’s arm, watches something quiet pass between the two of them. He feels more adrift than ever.

They’re in some nowhere settlement called Oberland Station that looks like a strong wind might blow it away. A day’s trek from Diamond City. Spitting distance from the spot where Hancock plucked June from Kellogg’s grip. He can almost see the turrets glint in the fading light. But he’s trying not to think about that, chewing on mentats, washing down the chalk taste of them with whiskey that hits a little turned. Sitting on the outskirts, his back to the dinky little tower they’ve erected to…what? watch for raiders. Lot of good that will do them with no turrets, no walls. But they know June here, well enough to welcome her with open arms, welcome him too. He’d spotted a couple Minutemen on the peripheries, swallows the bile the thought of Preston still gives him.

And it feels like déjà vu. To be out on the road again. With her. Maybe it makes it all the more painful that way she’d unrolled her sleeping bag across the ramshackle room from him. He can feel the echo of all those nights wrapped around her in the lonely parts of him. The sweet taste of her. His fingers slick from between her legs, bringing them up to her parted lips. The sweet, sweet goddamn sound of her begging his name. 

Yeah, he wants to fuck. Bad. Gratingly bad. June specifically. But more than that, the root really of the deeper hurt, he wants to watch the reflection of a fire’s dying embers glint gold across her hair as she sleeps. Soundly. His hand in hers. ‘Cause it seems like she needs some of that. Some sleep, some peace. Maybe even more than she did before. Like he’s gutted out a part of her too. And whatever they brought to Diamond City, whatever she and Valentine discussed in hushed whispers, seemed to rattle her. Quiet all the way out of town. Thinking, clearly, worrying her lip with her teeth. He ain’t asked of course. Figured he didn’t have the right. Might not have ask before things between them went to shit though. Her business is her business. Maybe that was the problem.

“Planning to head back to Goodneighbor?”

He nearly jumps out of his skin, cranes his neck to look behind him. June’s standing just a few feet away, the fire at her back ringing her in light. “Jesus Christ, you trying to kill me?” She doesn’t answer. Hancock turns to look at her full on. With the light at her back, her face is cast in dark shadow. He can’t make out her features, squints to try. “Do you need me to?”

He’s sure, even in the dark, that he sees just a brief flicker of emotion pass over her eyes. But she snuffs it like a candle. “Piper has business back in Diamond City, but I need to head near Sanctuary. Could use some muscle.”

“Then I’m your gun.”

She nods, turns her back to him so her voice becomes muted. “You good to leave before daybreak?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll meet you by the tower then.” She glances over her shoulder back at him. “Goodnight, Mayor Hancock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3 
> 
> Oh! And come find me on my new [tumblr](https://junkbabelna.tumblr.com/)!


	19. Chapter 19

It’s just a flesh wound. Ain’t all that bad as far as Hancock can tell, but it must look like hell because June is holding him tight. Her arms crisscrossed over his chest. One hand curled over his shoulder, the other across his ribs, her breath so close to his ear it’s like they’re making love again. Or maybe it is that bad. His June is covered in blood and there’s only a brief flare of panic before he realizes it’s his own. His blood spurts up through her fingers where’s she holding him. So goddamn tight like she’s trying to hold his chest together. He watches it run rivulets down her fingers. Bright and hot and so red against her skin, her hair. His ears are ringing. Loud. In the distance, he can hear scaffolding coming loose, gunshots, shouts. Raiders, right? Or gunners? His thoughts slip easy from him, like they weren’t ever his to begin with. June’s nails feel like pinpricks on his skin. Digging in. He grins, wants to say something like _was this all I had to do to get you to touch me again,_ but his throat ain’t moving, lips ain’t budging. He tries to say her name. Those nails of hers dig in tighter. “Don’t die, John, please. Please!” _John._ Well ain’t that nice.

The doc’s so ghoul, she practically glows. The whole room a wobbling, shivering mess of green light. He can feel the rads coming up from the floor, that soft fraying feeling inside his muscles, a pleasant throb. There’s a crater in the center of him. He can feel it. Like he’s been blown in two, his middle just string barely holding the rest of him together.

June’s voice is like trill over the ringing in his ears. Her words wobbling. He can’t make them out. He wants to scream at her to get the hell out of here, out of the rads. He tries to say her name, hears her voice peter out. The rads thrum under him. His vision darkens like it had the very first time. At the edges, cracking like glass, and then all at once.

Hancock figures it’s a dream at first. June asleep in some worn out old chair beside him, head bowed, hair spilling over her face. He’s had a lot of dreams like that these past few months. June beside him, on top of him. There’d been one, just a few days after she left for the second time, where June slipped under his bed to cry, where he’d listen to the sound of it until morning. There hadn’t been enough jet in the whole goddamn city to wash that dream out of his mouth.

But when Hancock turns a little where he lays, his whole side twinges, and the memory of the past few days comes rushing back. It ain’t a dream. June’s here. He’s hurt. And the sound of him creaking on what might be the hardest damn cot in the whole Commonwealth has startled her awake. Those big eyes of hers widening, then narrowing. She makes a show of scooting away and Hancock tries not to let his heart ache. “’Morning, doll.” She blinks at him, like she’s still caught in a dream herself, fingers curling over the arms of that rickety chair. Her radcounter’s playing a damn symphony, louder and louder like some kind of screeching, howling little animal. “Better get out of here, sweet thing, or you’ll end up looking like me.”

June looks down at her pipboy like it surprises her, raises her fingers to her lips like she expects to find a rad sore, expects to find something awful. “Yeah.” Her voice is a quiet rasp. “Yeah, shit.” She stands, a little unsteady on her feet. And she wavers some, at the doorway. Those long legs of hers rocking a little back and forth at the threshold. Hancock wonders what she’s thinking about. Now, before, at any time at all. Feels further from knowing than he ever has. She heads out into the night without another word. Like she’s already gave him too many.

It’s three days before he can walk well again, before he can stand without wincing. Shotgun blast to the side, the doc tells him. Tore up his ribs, his insides. At least the coat’s alright, hanging grimy from the back of the chair where June had been when he woke up. Just another spot to patch. He’s done that a hundred times before. 

But it’s been a long time since he’s been hurt like this. Before June, before maybe even Goodneighbor. When he was just a junkie in the Wastes. And he’s been thinking about that some – laid out on his back – thinking about who he used to be, who he is now. What kind of man he is, could be. Heavy shit, really. Heavier than he usually likes. But mostly too he’s been thinking about June. About what she must have seen when he nearly bled out in her arms. Thinking about it in maybe a different way than he used to. Real abstract. He never hoarded comics like other kids back when he was just a scamp in Diamond City, never liked to read ‘em. The world in ‘em was too clean, too safe. Unfamiliar in a way that made his little mind spin. And that’s how she lived, ain’t it? June spent all her years before the deep freeze too clean and too safe and he imagines now, clearer than he did before, that everything she sees out here just hits harder. He wishes he’d asked her about that, back when he could ask her things that mattered.

He’s been thinking too about what it took her to get him here, to this little shack. Doc told him, when he was lucid enough to listen, that she’d showed up one morning at the crack of dawn, covered in grime and gore, shivering like a little animal. Hancock breathing real shallow at her feet. _Never did ask her how she managed to get you all this way._ Must have been hell. Alone. In the dark. Who knows how far. June may never look at him again, but as far as he’s concerned that’s love. Dragging him from one ass end of the Commonwealth to the other. Some variety of love, at least. He’ll take what he can get.

When the sun goes down, Hancock limps his way out of the shack. He finds June sitting by a weak little fire, just far enough that the rads won’t get her, close enough that the greenish light from the shack spills over her. She looks smaller than he remembers which ignites a particularly inconvenient need to hold her. Ain’t the time for that. Maybe ain’t gonna be the time ever again. Hancock stuffs his hands into his pockets, heads down closer to her.

If he’s being honest with himself, he’s half-surprised that she’s still here. In the heavy fog of medex he’d dreamt a hundred times of waking up alone, of a June lost again in the Wasteland. But here she is, right in front of him, leaning heavy up against that damn pooch. “Whatcha doing out here?” She doesn’t flinch in surprise like she used to when he’d sneak` up real quiet. So she’s either getting better at listening or getting less spooked and he ain’t sure either of those bode all that well for what she’s been up to, what she’s been seeing.

“Thinking.” Her voice is a little rough again, a little lower.

He takes it as an invitation and saunters over beside her. “What about?”

“Forever.” Her voice echoes out into the night.

Beyond the faint glow of the doctor’s shack, there’s nothing. Not a light to be seen except the even fainter glow of the stars. The Wasteland looks like it could swallow them whole. Deep and dense and animal. “Whatcha thinkin’ about shit like that for?”

One side of her mouth quirks up, but he can’t tell if it’s a real smile or not, not with how stiff she is, forearms resting on bent knees. He lights a cigarette, lets the smoke plume out the ruin of his nose. Lets the silence hold them, cushion them.

She breaks it, her voice so thin it almost ain’t there. “It’s hard to think about being here forever.” Her eyes flit up. “I’m sorry if that hurts you.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. Doesn’t know how to say he doesn’t understand what the hell she even means, that whatever it is cuts like a knife, that just the idea that she’s worried about how he feels at all makes him feel jumpy and new. “Don’t worry about hurting me doll.” He flicks ash from the tip of his cigarette. she watches it carve a line of light through the darkness, the light from the campfire casting gold across one side of her face, the other side in shadow. He sees her lips twitch down, her eyelids lower just a little. Weary. His girl is so weary. He settles down beside her, takes his knife out to whittle away at a little piece of firwood. “Get some sleep, huh? I’ll watch the Wastes.” She says nothing back to him, but she turns away, lays down onto the ground, He watches her for a while. Watches her back rise and fall, watches it slow. So she does still trust him, with her skin at least. He’ll take that. 

They leave two mornings later. His wound almost healed. It’s a clear, almost pretty day. Hardly a cloud. Hancock doesn’t ask where they’re going. Even when she liked him, she wouldn’t always say. Maybe she doesn’t even know. He guesses it really don’t matter. Not in the grand scheme of things. So he follows her just like that pooch does. Silent, without a goddamn question. Hancock turns to tip his hat to the doc as they crest over the hill aways from the shack. June leans down to run her fingers along the pooch’s ears. She looks back at him and he watches the way her shoulders release when she catches sight of him. “I’ve got you," he says, even though he ain't sure exactly why.

“I know.” Something blooms in his chest. That love again. The one he should have said out loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	20. Chapter 20

He ain’t ever dreamed like this. Ever in his whole life. Like it’s one, long dream. Like he’ll wake up beside June and wander all day and when he goes to sleep, their sleeping bags further apart than they’ve ever been, wake up beside her again, somewhere else.

Sometimes he wakes up to the June he knew before, to the June in his bed, the June glancing over her shoulder at him, sun framing her head, a smile on her face he don’t see much anymore. The June he could roam on, whole body laid out for him, opening for him. The soft salt smell of her skin up against his, the taste of her wet on his lips. A June that he can touch and touches him, fingers finding all the whirled, most mottled parts of him. He’d wanted to ask her, _shit_ for months, why that shit ain’t bother her, why she seems to seek it out. Ain’t the time for it now, might never be the time for it again. His vision feels hazy. Hancock glances over at her from where he’s crouched across the fire, whittling away at some old piece of wood with a knife to keep his hands busy. The faint glow of the city’s at her back but he can tell, by the way she’s holding onto the pooch, that she’s staring out into the blackness of the Wastes stretching out long behind him. _Relax doll,_ he almost says, but instead lets the silence lay heavy between them, lets that dream feeling stretch out again inside of him, all around him.

Sometimes when he wakes up in that thick haze, they’re somewhere else entirely. On her turf, probably, what he understands of it. Cobbled together from billboards and brittle books, from those distorted visions in the memory lounger and the vague stories she’d tell him, when the jet was settling soft inside of her, a long time ago.

He’ll know it’s different right away because even just the air feels different. Sharp almost, foreign. And he’ll reach out and find his skin smooth. Not ghoulified, not weathered by the Wastes. Smooth and soft and not like anything he’s seen on himself in so long, maybe in his whole life. And it jars him. Real unpleasant like. Because there’s a longing inside of him that seems to only grow when he thinks of her, when he wonders about her before and him before and the dark strange passage of time, fractured now, by the bombs and the war and vaults. And as he runs his hand down her flank, time shifts around him. Rads skittering across his skin; the hem of her dress gossamer then faded then torn; the tree swaying heavy in front of them shriveling up, turning to ash. “Bunker Hill.”

He nearly cuts himself. Her voice a sudden loud echo. Hancock glances up over the fire. She’s looking at him, through him. The pooch laid down now by her side. June’s stoic, frozen, but her knuckles are white from how tightly she’s holding her shins. “What about it, doll?”

“We’ll go there next.”

Hancock frowns. Ain’t nothing useful in Bunker Hill, ain’t nothing even worth stopping for. Lately it seems like she’s just wandering, just pulling names out of that head of hers and setting her feet that way. Seems, lately, like she’s trying to walk herself damn near to death. But Hancock just nods, turning the blade in his hand to keep chipping away at the wood. “’Course, sweetheart. That ain’t no problem.”

By the time they reach Bunker Hill, the high summer sun pounding down on them, Hancock has come back to reality. Solidly. Unpleasantly. Like the long dream had risen up only from the quiet of the Wastes. It’s easy to go a little crazy out there. Especially now with June silent as the grave. Just the sound of their quiet footsteps, the panting of the pooch. The bustle of the outer city is real welcome, even if he’s got both hands on his rifle now, more raiders than he likes to see out by Bunker Hill’s front gates. But June doesn’t even seem to notice them. She’s back in her vault suit, unzipped now to the waist, sweating through the tank top underneath, a sheen on her skin. Neither of them have had a proper bath in maybe weeks but she still looks good. Real fucking good and he’s still a man and still a scoundrel and the idea of fucking her up against one of these high walls rockets through his brain, cock in charge again. And she must be able to feel it, the raw energy of his lust, because she looks back over her shoulder at him. The look drains him. Because she’s smiling again. The one he knows she doesn’t feel. And all he can think about now is what he’s lost.

She’s the same, mostly. Flirting with raiders, charming shopkeeps. And Hancock ain’t too bad at pretending to be the same too. Following up after a couple long unpaid debts, getting a sense of the lay of the land since he’s been gone, keeping June just in his peripheries. They do this all day, until the sun starts to kiss the horizon.

“We should stay here tonight,” she says counting bullets cross-legged by the center of the settlement, “get some rest.” And there’s something off in her voice that makes him stop looking at the raiders glowering over at the brahman stand and look at her. She’s small in the shadow of this place. When she looks up at him her eyes are that familiar blank. Until they aren’t. Until they’re full of tears and Hancock is so stunned that he freezes, cigarette just inches from his ruined mouth. He can’t remember if he’s seen her cry. Ever. In the more than a year that he’s known her. But it’s over almost as quick as it begins. The June he knew is gone, a shell again. She reaches up to wipe a single stray tear from her cheek. Then she laughs, mouth breaking into a wide, empty smile.

It’s eerie. Eerier than it was before. His heart hurts and he feels, maybe for the first time since he pulled her from Kellogg’s bunker, genuine fear. He swallows it. Just like he’s always done. “’course doll.”

The mattress is as hard as the goddamn Wastes but at least he’s got a blanket on him, a place to rest his head that isn’t his own arm. Hancock turns onto his side, watches the light from the settlement skitter through the gaps in the boards. June put up a few extra caps for a room with a door. It’s narrow enough that Hancock can touch both sides of it with his hands at once, just big enough for the bunk bed he’s top bunk on now, for the little basin of water in the corner to wash your face. But it’s private. Which might have been nice once. But now it’s just lonely. He misses the cushion of other people. June’s silence is killing him. His own silence too. It’s enough. It’s been enough. “June?” The silence swells bnefore he can hear, just faintly, the sound of her shifting on the bunk below. “June listen to me.” Nothing. Soft chatter from the shops outside. “Are you listening?”

He hears her shift again then fall quiet and he’s sure, for one terrible moment, that she’s going to ignore him completely. Leave him with everything he’s left half said, let his words die on the vine, but her voice comes up muffled from below before he can say another word.. “Yes.”

Hancock takes a long breath. “Now you ain’t gotta believe me. And I know you probably won’t but I’m sorry, alright? More sorry than I’ve ever been in my goddamn life. I ain’t never should have let you walk out that door. I’ll regret it for whatever time I got left. And probably even after that.” That silence again. Thick and heavy. But it feels good to put it out into the world, even if she never says another word to him.

“Valentine told me that I shouldn’t expect an apology from you.”

Hancock exhales, then scoffs. He feels a little like he’s waking up. For real this time. “Yeah?” What else he tell you?”

“That I should let go.”

“Of?”

“You, I guess. He’s sort of vague, you know.” He can hear her shifting, imagines her on her back now, eyes looking up at where he’s laying.

Hancock chuckles. “Boy, do I.”

The silence doesn’t surprise him. He was, honestly, surprised that she was talking to him for this long. But then her voice comes up from the darkness, soft and quiet .“I’ve missed you. I _miss_ you.”

His breath freezes cold in his chest. He leans over the edge of the bed. The light from between the boards scatters across her face. She’s just like he thought she’d be, arms folded at the base of her neck, looking up at him. “Can I come down?’ In the half light, he sees her frown.

“Yes.”

“I ain’t gonna if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t know.”

“No funny business, I promise.”

He watches something switch in her eyes. Like the kickback of a gun, like a Molotov hitting the side of a building. All sudden flame. She’s standing before he can say another word, staggering backward toward the door. “Of course you’d say that. Of course you’d fucking say that.”

“June.” She’s out the door, the thin wood banging against the frame. Hancock swings his legs over the side of his bunk. “June!” The pooch growls at him, teeth bared. Hancock follows her out.

She’s left the little shack but doesn’t seem to have thought much further than that. Hancock finds her just a ways away, her back to him, hands curled into fists. “Jesus, doll.” He sloughs his coat over his shoulders, a few people stopping as they pass to stare. “Calm the hell down, alright. Let’s just talk about this.”

June spins on her heels, nostrils flaring, that same rage he’d seen before she leveled that glass at Whitechapel just radiating from her. “Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” She’s snorting like an angry brahman. A few of the raiders duck back into the bar. “Don’t you tell me to do a goddamn thing ever again!” He just stands there, jaw working. He ain’t ever practiced the kind of finesse he needs now. Woulda knifed anybody else who talked to him like this. Won’t do that. But he can’t be soft with her either. Can’t hold her, can’t brush her off. Doesn’t want to. Because this is the most he’s gotten from her in god knows how fucking long. She tightens her fists. “Do you hear me Hancock?”

“I hear you.” June hesitates, then advances on him, and Hancock braces himself. She ain’t got much of an arm but she got a lot of moxie and hell of a lot of rage and he ain’t in no place but to take it. But she doesn’t hit him, instead she takes his face in her hands and presses her lips to his. And at first, Hancock just stands stiff, unmoving, but when her tongue traces the seam of his mouth, his brain clicks back with his body. He’s on her. Descending. Teeth and tongue. Hands roaming.

June yanks herself away from him, holding his jaw tight in her hands. He hears himself growl. “Now you listen to me, you incredible piece of shit.”

One side of his mouth quirks up. Can’t help it. She tightens her grip on him then wavers. She’s crying. For real now. Tears streaming down her cheeks. “Doll. _Doll_.” He reaches up to take hold of her arms and she lets him, doesn’t flinch away. “Don’t cry, sunshine. Ain’t no reason to cry.” He pulls her to him, lets her rest her head against his chest.

She pounds on it with her closed fists. Just once, like a warning. “If you send me away again, I’ll kill you.”

He chuckles, resting his chin on the crown of her head, holding her tighter. Ash from the center bonfires drifts through the air, a few raiders smoke quietly outside the bar. The relief inside of him is so pure it feels like a hit of jet. Hancock lays one hand in the small of her back, the other cradling her ribs. “You’re freezing, doll.”

She squirms in his arms. “Did you hear what I said?!”

“Yeah.” He feels her wrap his arms around him, feels her settle closer, chest still jumping from the force of here crying. “Wherever I am, that’s where you’ll be, alright sweet thing? Ain’t never gonna close a door on you again. That I can promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


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